The Invention of Exile

by Vanessa Manko

  Their talk turns to Julia. Does she ask for me? Yes. Does she work? Yes. Too hard. Leo can feel his father tracking him with his eyes as he walks back and forth. Is she waiting for me? Yes.

  “Father, enough of all that now,” he begins. “Listen to me, I’ve been thinking. I know Vera has an appointment with the embassy. We’re all scheduled, but if we can’t make any progress, if it comes to it, I think we should try crossing the border.” His father meets his gaze now, a silence stretching out along the band of light that falls into the shop. Leo can see the dust motes spinning wildly, holding on to the air in desperation. He looks away from his father.

  “I’ll drive,” Leo says.

  “Was there ever any question about that?”

  “I’ll drive. We’ll go up to Sonora,” Leo continues. “You know those towns. We can make it a nice trip—a good long one. Get out of the city. And we’ll drive and drive. Maybe even make a segue to the coast. We’ll take that coast road along the Sea of Cortez. All the way up to Nogales. It’s just route 15. We’ll head west, first through Toluca and Tonalá, then to Guadalajara, Tepic. I’ve mapped it out here in the guidebook.”

  “I don’t know.” His father is shaking his head, jaw set, his face, body with a confirmed resistance, Leo meanwhile still pleading. He draws closer to his father now, leans forward and then pivots on his heel to pace.

  “We’ll take it nice and easy. We can go to the ocean maybe, you know? Then it’s just to route 15 all the way up—Culiacán, Hermosillo, Cananea, Nogales. And we’ll just cross right there, pretend like we’re simply crossing home to Arizona or California to get our visas de turistas fixed.”

  “And if they stop us?”

  “They won’t.”

  “But if they do?”

  “You really think they are going to bother with you? We’ll give the border guards a little something, what do they call it—a mordida, right? Grease the palms, you know? I’m telling you it’s easy, easy.”

  “Yes, yes. I’ve heard this—‘it’s easy, so easy,’ but no,” his father says, leaning on the counter now. It is cooler out, the early night coming on, and a breeze finds its way inside. The beads sway and click.

  “Father,” he says, “why do you have to be so damn good? It might help more if you were a bit of a jerk, you know—not so upstanding,” he continues, and then laughs to lessen the harsh tone he hears in his voice. Vera passes in front of the window, and then, in a moment, she enters. How out of place they both seem. Distinctly Americans, Leo thinks. In contrast to their father—his accent, his manner. Suddenly he is acutely aware of how their consonants are hitting hard against their teeth.

  “Look,” says Leo. He is taller than his father, just a bit, fills out his suit more though he has a lankiness of youth. “Now, we came here to help you. You can’t go on living like this. We’ll simply get in the car and drive. They’ll have no idea and you’ll be with us. God, Vera and me? You can’t get more unassuming than the two of us.”

  “You? You’ve practically got ‘blacklisted’ stamped on your foreheads,” his father says, shaking his head. “I’m not going back like that. I want to be legal.”

  He watches his father, hears him repeating, “I want to be legal.”

  “More than you want to be home with us?”

  “They are two different things,” his father insists.

  “Father, please stop being so stubborn and idealistic.” Leo feels the words through his gritted teeth.

  “Stubborn? Idealistic?” His voice is loud, booming. “If I go illegally, maybe the first day, the second, or in a year, they will get me, they will find me out—” He breaks off, shaking his head. “And then what? Back to Russia? For what? Live out a life in a camp? No. I will work on my inventions. I will go legally.”

  “Don’t you see they’ll never let you in legally. I can even see that. It’s been over ten years! You have tried their way, with their rules. It has not worked!” Leo can feel the excitement in his voice, his heart racing. “Has it?”

  “You do not know what I know,” Austin says, matter-of-fact.

  “What is it that you know, that you are so certain of, that you know more than we do?” Leo asks.

  “I know what they are capable of,” Austin says. The same flat, steady tone.

  “Who?” he snaps, and then as if thinking out loud, the thought just coming to him, voice lowered, near to a whisper, he muses, “All these years and you’ve fled other countries, crossed other borders, and now this last one, this one you won’t cross.”

  “You don’t know—these men. They know things. There are some people I know. They have power, you see? You understand? You don’t know what they can do. They came for me when I did nothing wrong, nothing! What will they do to me when I actually break their laws?” His voice rising.

  “Haven’t they already done enough? Besides, don’t you see, there is no ‘they,’ they won’t do anything to you, they won’t bother with you. You can go, you can—”

  “You don’t understand, you don’t realize. These men!”

  “All right now,” Vera says, placing the sandwich she purchased on the counter. “Enough! Let’s settle in and talk before we get into any plans.” She turns to Leo, her voice lower. “Don’t upset him. He gets agitated enough, be gentle. It’s not so easy for him.”

  “It hasn’t been easy for us, for Mother,” Leo grumbles.

  “Don’t you think he knows that, feels that every day of his life?”

  “He’s just drowning in his own sorrow is how I see it.”

  “Can you blame him?”

  Leo is standing in the doorway now, back to the inside of the shop, hands stuffed in his pockets, he can’t stop fuming, but feels tears come into his eyes.

  “It’s his own fault.”

  “No, it is not and you know that’s not true. He’s trying in his own way.”

  “What way is that? His inventions? Useless scribblings by an old stateless Russian. That’s what they are!”

  • • •

  “YOUR NAME, SIR.”

  “Austin Voronkov.”

  “Austin Voronkov. Is that your full name? In Russian?”

  “It’s Ustin Alexandrovich Voronkov.”

  “What country are you from?”

  “I’m an applicant for U.S. citizenship.”

  “But we’ll need to know your country.”

  “Russia,” Vera says.

  “The Soviet Union?”

  “No. He is Russian,” Leo said.

  “I see. Well, Russian.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you come here today with your son and daughter.”

  “Yes.”

  “And please, your full names.”

  “Vera Voronkov. Leo, Leon Voronkov,” Vera said.

  “I see here you are requesting an appeal, a waiver?”

  “Yes.”

  “For deportation, a ruling from 1920.”

  “Yes. That’s correct.”

  “Anarchy. Mr. Voronkov, you’ve been found guilty of the charge of anarchy. Do you agree to this?”

  “Yes. That is correct.”

  “And why the appeal at this late date? Your date of deportation is 1920. It’s 1948.”

  “I would like to join my family.”

  “Your family is here.”

  “I’d like to join my wife and children in the U.S.”

  “You do know that we can accept a waiver and appeal form, but it’s Washington that deals with deportation cases?”

  “Yes. We understand this,” Vera said.

  “Anarchy. A serious offense.”

  “His political leanings have changed,” Vera said.

  “Look here, I’m not an anarchist.”

  “It’s a mistake, you see,” Vera began.

  “I’m an applican
t for U.S. citizenship,” Austin began to speak, but Vera placed her hand out to stop him.

  “An applicant, perhaps, but if you were deported”—the immigration officer tilted his head to the side and then tipped his glasses down his nose, staring at Austin—“well, you see, it’s not just a simple application for U.S. citizenship.”

  The room was tight, confining, low-ceilinged, and the one window faced a brick wall. The hallway was dim and every once in a while he could hear footsteps clatter past. His head felt tight. His pulse in his neck throbbed. He was taking deep breaths. They were asking him questions. He answered. He could hear his voice, though a strange echo brought his words back to him and he kept his eyes on his hands, could feel Vera on one side of him, Leo on the other. They too were talking, when they had something to say—sometimes leaning forward to emphasize a point, other times sitting back in slumped exasperation. The clerk was of some higher office than the petty clerks who sat within the outer room behind the glass partition. No. It seemed they had moved farther into the building. Closer to the seat of power, yes. Austin imagined that somewhere within this entire structure was a central office with one man seated in the middle, aware of what went on within all these rooms with windowless doors. And he heard the words come to his lips, almost without realizing it he was talking, in response to a question. He heard his words echoing still, but he seemed to be speaking and taking deep breaths, gasping as he continued talking, telling the clerk, “Look here, look here,” and going on at once about his wrongful arrest, hoping that the unseen surveillance would also hear, about the weeks spent incommunicado, the interrogation and the deportation. “Thrown out back to a country intent on murder and starvation!” And he explained his long travels as a Russian émigré, following with the others to Odessa, across the Black Sea to Constantinople and then onward to France—Le Havre first, before Paris. Then the Nansen passport. He produced it from his satchel. A many-folded, wrinkled booklet of gray disintegrating papers. And the long waiting process through quotas. He heard himself asking the clerk if he knew about quotas. The young man blushed and looked away from Austin, who looked to Vera and Leo before continuing on, explaining that the quotas meant only a certain percentage of ethnicities were allowed into the country in any given year. “Two percent,” he said. Two percent of the U.S. Russian population for any given year would be allowed in. They never made the 2 percent, they never made quota. And he spoke of the journey from Russia to Veracruz and Mazatlán. Desperate for work, he took the lighthouse work, then the copper mines, waiting to be reinstated. Two months. He told the clerk about the two months, how it was only to be two months, which stretched into one year, then two before he moved to Mexico City, and now, the lousy brutes started stealing his designs and drafts. “You men and your power,” he kept repeating like a refrain. He told the clerk about how he knew that the U.S. government had been watching him, sending this Jack to ensure his inventions wouldn’t get to the patent agents or to the commissioner, making sure that he wouldn’t try something tricky like crossing the border. They’d cornered him in. They’d blocked him out. He was breathing more heavily now, quite out of breath. The man was behind the desk, staring. Vera and Leo too were at him, saying, settle down, whispering. It’s all right, Father. Settle down. Someone brought him a glass of water and he drank half of it in one full gulp, spilling some down his chin and onto his shirtfront. Vera rose and was talking, nearly whispering to the clerk, who’d risen himself, both near the now open door.

  “Can’t you see? He’s quite in need of being with his family,” he heard her say, and then the clerk: “If we allowed for every person in need of being with his or her family, the country would be overrun.” Words whispered. Hushed. Hissing and then a louder voice.

  “Is there no way to make an exception, considering the circumstances?” Leo stepped in. “We’d like to have him home.”

  “We can’t risk his becoming a ward of the state.”

  “We won’t let that happen,” Leo said. “Besides, he can work. He’s an engineer. We can provide for him if it comes to that.”

  “That’s not a guarantee.”

  He watched Leo and Vera talking with the clerk, bodies tilted forward on an angle, pointing, looking at each other, to him. Leo sprang back in anger, prowling, muttering in disgust. Vera kept pleading. Anything to be done? Anything? he heard her say. They were only two, three feet away from him, but their words were garbled and distant. Suddenly, there was more conferring, whispering. The senior clerk was speaking in a low, nearly muffled voice. A tone of graveness. Then their eyes, all of them, turned to him. He recoiled, averting his own gaze out the window to the bricked wall, each edge of brick fitting neatly into the others.

  “There is one thing,” the clerk began, and then looked to Austin and gestured for Vera and Leo to step out of the room and into the hallway. More low voices. Austin still sat drinking the glass of water. He was not sure if he should follow them outside, or stay where he was. He stared out the window, again the bricks sat in their tidy formation. Footsteps began far down an unseen hallway and he could hear them approaching. Under the door a line of light, shadows of movement, whispers, low voices. All voices talking about him, no doubt—planning, colluding. To what end? For what purpose? His own children now siding with these clerks? He no longer knew what to think.

  The clerk walked back into the office with a purpose. No more of his vague, vacillating stance, his unwillingness to assist, to listen. He was making phone calls. Vera leaned over him, bent toward him in a gentle way, talking to him. “Another glass of water, Father? The man is preparing for you to answer some simple questions, yes?” Was that all right with him? Well, it had to be, Austin thought, nodding his head. “We will be right outside, just right here,” Vera said, as she and Leo left the room. Yes. He understood. Fine, fine, he nodded. He took a sip of water and set the glass down.

  Soon, a different man was ushered in to sit behind the desk. He wore a tweed jacket and a maroon shirt whose buttons were like opaled seashells. His mustache was black, but his hair was graying and he had large black eyes set far back into his head.

  “Mr. Voronkov. Are you ready to begin?”

  “Yes.”

  “I will present you with a series of images here on these cards and you then tell me what you see. The very first thing that comes to mind.”

  “Yes. All right.” He sat up straight. The young man before him presented a flash card. An enormous black butterfly lingered on the page, and the butterfly morphed into a face. Two eyes, there in the empty section and the features forming—nose, mouth, the cheekbones—and then it melded back to its insect form, wings, antennae. The next card similar, though as he stared, seeking out some image, any image, it seemed to crack, a split down the middle, turning black and dark, some terrible, horrifying darkness of nature, beguiling and yet dangerous. He could hear the pencil faintly scratching along the page as the doctor wrote his responses. Next, a mouth. Wide, open, its smile malicious and, at one instant, benign. The next one, eyes hovered above, red and pulsing, demonic in their stare. Clouds came next—threatening, treacherous clouds, violent as if they would touch down out of the sky causing havoc like gods wrapped in pastel colors. He spoke in a fast spurt of words, the doctor goading him on. Say the first thing, the very first thing that comes to your mind, he scribbling furiously, taking down what he said, no doubt, to use it against him, Austin suddenly thought. The cards flashed before him, first one and then another. Some black and gray. Others colored—a light pink or red, gentle watercolors with a strange, eerie wickedness about them.

  “Who are you and what do you want from me?” Austin asked, rising now. The door opened, Vera and Leo stood in the hallway. Austin looked to them and they were walking toward him. He cowered back and then shouted, “Who are you and what do you want?” They were coming closer, and behind them others had gathered in the doorway, had stopped in the hallway to peer into the office, all st
aring at him as if they might take something, some fiber of his being, something crucial, and he felt the floor giving out from under him—a sudden rush. He had to sit down for a moment, just a moment and he fell into the chair, grasping its sides, knuckles white. The men gathered in the doorway were clerks, all with manila files, suits, and hair combed back. The light from the hallway white and monotonous now and their feet like his own, caked with the insistent dust of Mexico City.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a man walking far down the hallway, past the men who had stopped to look at him seated in such a vulnerable, unforgiving state. His walk was familiar, a kind of calm, nonchalant stroll amid the commotion of those crammed in the doorway and hallway, all peering deep into him. That pace, that gait! Austin knew it. Jack! His suspicions had been right after all. He grew silent, his breathing calmed. He looked blankly at Vera and then to Leo, each stood on either side of him now. Leo was talking to the clerk still, papers spread out on the desk. Austin saw his satchel leaning up against the side of the chair and in one swift move he lunged for it, tucked it tight under his arm. He stormed out of the room, excusing himself among the people lurking around the door and down the hallway. He could hear Vera now clattering behind him, other voices close and then distant. The bastard was still walking down the hallway, oblivious and nonchalant. When Austin stepped out of the room, he could feel hands on his arms, but he threw them all off. My God, his designs had never even reached the ambassador! He pushed past the men who tried to block his way, pressing, pushing, and passing until they finally gave way and he tore down the hallways, slipping for a moment, dipping down before he caught his balance, grasping for the wall, steadying himself, all the while hearing the commotion at his back, voices—Mr. Voronkov, Father, Father, Mr. Voronkov—but they faded as he now made his way back out to the vast lobby with its lines and shuffling papers, clicking of the typewriters and murmurings, the din of simultaneous speech. He kept running until he found himself outside on the embassy steps, the cars flashing by. The park sat calmly before him, people strolling amid its delicate lanes, the dark green glossy in the sun. No Jack. Austin raced down the steps and crossed the road, the traffic screeching to a halt. He walked into the park, looking left and right, his satchel beneath his arm. The damn thief, taking his designs, ensuring they’d never get to the ambassador. It was unconscionable and he’d confront him and say, “Look here, you cannot do this to a man! You cannot torment him so, disrupt the natural course of his life and ruin all his chances,” for that’s what had happened, Jack appearing in his life as a reminder, a deterrent. The bastard. He’d tell him though, and they’d all soon see. He was Austin Voronkov, inventor. He was not an anarchist.