The Invention of Exile (19 page)

Your loving daughter,

Julia

Cananea

May 1, 1934

My dear Mother and sister Catherine:

Well, what I've long awaited to write you news of has finally become a reality. Dearest sister and mother, the children and I have been granted a visa and very soon—I'm so delighted to tell you I can hardly write fast enough—we'll be reunited with you. I'm due to secure our visas at the Consulate in Nogales. From there, we'll then take the Mexico Central Line and change in Chicago for the New York line. You can expect us sometime in late June. I'll post a telegram from the railroad when in Chicago.

I only hope Austin will be safe and well here without us.

Your loving daughter and sister,

Julia

This is what Austin came to know: the evening readings of her letters were a buffer. They were a way for her to share (indirectly) her longing to be home, though she was not aware of it when she read openly as if she were speaking to her sister one-on-one, those words between women, words not meant for his ears. And he'd found it so endearing, the innocent way she'd read to him, her soft, warm voice filling the night, all the while he listening, aware of the significance of each line.

After a week at the mine, sometimes two, he'd return to the barracks, to their home now empty and disordered. He washed with the soap Julia made him, dry and cracked from disuse during his days away. Other nights, before dark he walked the half mile to the company's store, where the Yaqui miners sat in a row under the shaded overhead, chewing sugar and molasses cakes.

“Another letter for you, Voronkov,” the storekeeper said on this night close to eleven months from their departure.

“Is that right?”

Silence.

“Tobacco. And that paper back there please.”

The sun was setting and Austin walked the route he took from the company store to his barracks house, a route he knew by sensation alone, the temperature dropping on his right and the late day sun, still hot and brittle, on his left. He passed the other barracks houses and nodded to the few workers seated on the front porch, knowing he would hear the flurry of whispers as he reached his fifth step past them. He did not speak to many, only out of necessity and then it was rare—work, when at the store, a few sentences only, “Paper please,” “Pack of Faros,” “Yes,” “Thank you.” He was not empty-handed on this particular walk. He held an envelope in one hand and a package of paper beneath his arm. In his habit, he had not yet opened the letter, rather enjoyed the press of it in his palm, the envelope still sealed like a secret and its scent fresh from the canvas mailbag, allowing the walk to delay the reading so that he could look forward to absorbing her words alone and free from the eyes of others.

How thirsty he was, he realized upon entering the front door, the screen banging behind him as he walked into the room, which, because he kept the shutters closed all day, still held the early morning air, air not touched by the heat. His step on the floorboards caused the unavoidable creaks and pops in concert with the shutters tapping and closing in the breeze, a racket that caused him to drop his bag of purchases (tomato, can of beans, cigarettes) on the table and cross the room to secure the shutter as the yellow-gold light from the end of the day filled the floorboards in their isolated parallel lines. He cleared his throat and hummed as he set out the can with a little bang of confirmation, the tomato already bruised and soft on one unfortunate side, and the pack of Faros, which fell from his hand with a light clicking sound as it hit the table. Then, he turned on the radio he'd made himself—copper wire and magnets. Loud at first and then softening as Austin lowered the volume with the crude knob (a button attached to a thimble), which required the lightest of touches to maneuver.

He took the letter and his Faros and sat on the porch railing in near darkness, the faintest lip of white edging the horizon like a baseboard. He smoked one cigarette to completion and then tore open the letter, this one handwritten on thin, newsprint pages, the palest of gray pinks.

Connecticut, 1934

Dear Austin,

. . . You are in our thoughts and prayers constantly. In your loneliest moments, know I have them too, that I long for you to be with me, dear, and oh the children, they long for you as you long for them. If I had the money, I would take the train all the way back to you, though I know, it's as you say—if you can hardly support yourself, how would you be able to support a wife and three children, and you are right—they shall grow up as Americans. After this, after everything, that is the least we can come out of from this dreadful situation. I do hope you are eating well, that you are occupied and that you stay strong in mind and body. I write to the senators and congressman almost weekly. . . .

He folded up the letter.
Eating well.
Eat? Was he hungry? Some days he could not tell. Of course he was, he had felt moments when his stomach growled. He would make something—the beans, slice the tomato. Still, he sat, the letter folded and tucked into the front pocket of his shirt. He took another cigarette from his pack, smoking, the sound of his exhale loud as any voice.
Write to the congressman weekly
. He could see her poised over her desk as she'd been here, the frown of concentration, the indents, half wrinkle, and perhaps she sat with hand on her chin, wondering at how best to make these men in power understand, to write the human element of the story and not just the facts—black and white, with dates and accounts, countries and borders. What did it all mean? Nothing.

Inside, he placed the letter with all the others in a crate under the bed. A whole pile of them—some in pencil, others in her tight script, and still more typed front and back so that it was difficult to read, the print from one side showing through beneath the other as if she couldn't quite say enough and so her words fell over and under each other, tripping almost in a hurry to say,
I miss
,
I miss
. It was as if the words, like the ones she'd sent from Cananea home, now did an about-face and started pouring out in the other direction, as if she'd suddenly realized—horrified—that home was not where she was now, but with him and she'd maybe regretted the leaving now that it was taking so long for him to come.

It was now close to a year.

Cananea, 1935

Dear Julia,

I can imagine what a surprise it still is to your mother and sister to have you back—their long lost Julia, “my Julia,” and in addition three children they've never seen before. I am quite happy they are out of this wilderness. It is not the place to raise children. However, I am lonesome without you all, my dear family. I miss you to the point of it being unbearable. I only hope the children aren't too much trouble for you. Children need a father. Then, they are good. Aussie—he's as you state. Too boisterous, yes. Really, he is one restless fellow. I just remember that I was not a penny worth better when of his age, but I do love him. If he's too much mischief, please correct him and sometime overlook him and suggest to him right manners. Oh, that rolling ball Leon. He is a real pet of mine. All the fun I had with him. While, Vera, my dearest baby girl. I know that she loves her daddy greatly. Well, tell her dear to be happy and that I will be soon with her. . . .

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.

 • • • 

T
HE
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.

 • • • 

I
T'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?

 • • • 

T
HE
CONSULATE
IN
N
OGALES
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.