The Invention of Exile Read online

  Then, silence.

  His next footfall, heavier now, and he is in Varvarovka, walking down the main road that runs through the village. The earth is frozen. The road uneven. Underfoot, the grooves made by wheels of carts and coaches are as hard as steel train tracks. The sun is gone. A bleak light fills the wide sky. The houses sit still and in their familiar rows, thatch-roofed. One or two let out a trail of smoke from chimneys. There are no sounds save for the wind. No animals mewing. No cows lolling. No shouts or voices or singing from an open window. No clank of scythes from the fields.

  He approaches the church, searching for people, but finds only a broken, cracked bell. It sits like an old anchor, rusted and cumbersome. He walks into the fields that lie barren, leading to the horizon. He can feel his legs growing heavy, dragging and ponderous. He sees a woman in the near distance, walking, more pacing like a feral animal, wringing her hands. He knows it’s Julia, though he cannot see her face. It’s more in her behavior. Her gestures, manner. He keeps walking even though his legs are weighted. He calls to her but no sound comes. She does not hear him. When the woman turns, the face is darkness, effaced.

  He wakes with a feeling of damp on his brow and chest. He sits up into pitch black. Rising, blinking and unsteady, he uses the bed as a guide. He walks to the sink and turns the tap, which, no matter how many times he’s fixed it, screeches and hisses like a cat. The cool water on his wrists feels good. Then the splash to his face—brow first, cheeks. He sputters his lips and stands upright. He can see his face in the glass, eyes glistening in the darkness.

  How strange that in his dream Julia should be in the Varvarovka that no longer exists. The images linger. A disquiet in his mind. How icy and barren his home looked. Could the dream be a segment of his life as it might have been, taking place elsewhere?

  Julia, Julia my jewel, what has become of us? Do you think of me as I think of you? I am ashamed I do this still, after so many years, fourteen years, time that is nearly enough to forget a face, but I remember yours, do you remember mine?

  • • •

  ST. PETERSBURG, VARVAROVKA KHERSON, ODESSA, CONSTANTINOPLE, PARIS, MAZATLÁN, CANANEA

  1920–34

  HE SAT BEFORE A MAN who smelled of morning. They twisted his words around. He didn’t understand then. But time brings clarity even in the confusion and murkiness of the present. If only he’d understood. They wanted him to be something so they made him into it.

  They called him a Red, an alien, an anarchist, Communist, Polack, Bolshevik, pig, commie, un-American. It’s what they leave out that matters. Husband, father. Of course, he was not yet a father, but how did they know. Others were. He soon would be.

  • • •

  KHERSON. IT SITS ON the Dnieper. Like in Gogol. It’s close to Odessa, but Odessa is on the Black Sea. Kherson is close to the Black Sea, but farther inland. When Austin and Julia traveled back to that continent—Asia—the boat took them first to Riga. They had to get to St. Petersburg. Then, from St. Petersburg to Kherson. There were no trains. They waited three months for one train, and, even then, they could not be sure of its destination.

  • • •

  HOW DID AUSTIN REMEMBER St. Petersburg 1920? He cannot see a whole city. Instead, there are just moments, rooms, views out a window. Like flashcards. There is the divided room they shared with other deportees now returned to Russia, the one stove between them. A midnight’s commotion on the floor below as the tenants fled to Finland. In the morning, the others fell upon their abandoned belongings—the pianos and desks, bureaus and tables divided for firewood.

  And then there are the memories of taste. The way he’d gotten accustomed to, some days longed for, the moldy taste of oat coffee. The meager coating of plum jam on black bread.

  Three months for one train. It would be going south, to Kiev, he’d heard.

  “Where is this train going?” he’d asked in the railway station, Julia by his side, he holding her wrist tight.

  “Nowhere. A train to nowhere,” someone bellowed.

  “To Ukraine? South?”

  “Yes.”

  “No,” someone else shouted.

  He told her not to speak. He too was frightened to utter a word lest his bourgeois accent be recognized. His own voice was his enemy. Hers too. It happened once and silence fell like an anchor amid the jumbled mess of suitcases, rucksacks, tied bed linens, icons, kettles, leather and felt boots.

  • • •

  THE TRAIN TRIP TOOK a whole week.

  “How can a country be run by barbarians?” He heard that often enough on that train ride. No one believed the Reds would win, that their revolution would last. And he began to believe it. He cared nothing for it all—politics, civil war, red, white. To hear politics to Austin was like hearing a dirty word. He simply didn’t want to live in a city where he could be shot on sight, where he was scared to utter a sentence, always whispering in broad daylight. As far as he knew, others were going to their summer homes, country estates, waiting it out. They could not stay there in St. Petersburg. They would go to his family. Then, as he overheard, the Reds had not gotten that far. Not yet.

  • • •

  WAS IT RIGHT TO be back there—in Russia? Where else would they have gone? And he’d no idea what they’d encounter, and he’d thought of turning them straight on to Paris from Riga instead of heading south. But at least she was getting to see his country, which he was proud to show her, the space, the sheer vastness of all that land. The civil war was tearing it up, but he and Julia looked out train windows into the birch forests, the trees iced, the ground sloping, meandering, curving hills and flat plains of white as far as one could see, and the country was indifferent. That nature could be so peaceful when the people of its land were killing each other, he thought.

  “What a sad country this is,” Julia said again and again.

  • • •

  THEY TRAVELED WITH no documents. By marrying him, Julia was no longer an American citizen. Austin was stateless, but, as far as he was concerned, they were Russian. Only Russia no longer existed. It had been stamped out. The most he could hope for was that no one searched them. They had no papers. Later came the Nansen passport—in 1922—but then, on that week’s train trip, they had nothing.

  Paper is stronger than one realizes.

  • • •

  IN RIGA, he’d sent a postcard to his mother and father. How to write such a postcard:

  “I’ve returned from America,” he managed to spell out. They never did get it. Instead, Julia and Austin arrived unannounced. His mother slammed the door in his face. She didn’t recognize him and when she did she burst into tears and still slammed the door in his face.

  “Shock,” people whispered, as a kind of searching explanation.

  • • •

  THE FARM WAS in Varvarovka, province of Kherson. A day’s walk from the station to the village. Their feet were swollen from the walking, making the leather tight, confining. The swelling did not go down for two days.

  The house was smaller than the house of his memory. It seemed dwarfed. He had been unsure whether he had grown or if it was time that had been the distorter—time and distance. The world of his childhood had taken place in larger rooms, surrounded by larger furniture and windows. The wardrobe that stood behind the table, the sideboard under the front windows covered with lace—both once loomed over him. Stalwarts of memory.

  He had not expected to return so the reunion was all the sweeter. He looked to Julia. She smiled at him as if imagining him as a boy. It was a tender smile. Her home was with him, it seemed to say. This American woman.

  The first evening. A meal. Ham, cabbage soup, eggs, bread and butter. It was the only food they’d eaten for three days. They ate in silence. He did not want to ask about the others, his brothers or his sisters. He could tell in the silence, in the furtive glances between mother and father, that there had been loss. It seemed best to w
ait. To eat, sleep, rest.

  The next morning, they learned that his sister Katya had died of spotted typhus. His brother Cornelius, an officer in the White Army, had shot himself rather than forfeit strategic information to the Reds.

  • • •

  AFTER THE WINTER THERE is the thaw. Wetness, water. The streets and lanes are mud, fields too. The snow dissolving, soaking into the ground. Here and there bits of green emerge. Buds. There is the gentlest hint of pink as if the bare brown branches of the cherry trees had blushed.

  They heard the sloshing, suckling footsteps first. Then, the voices. Brusque shouting. He’d heard about the other homes, searched, looted. How sometimes they took the man of the house into the woods. Up until that moment, they lived in a relative state of peace, could even pretend at times that they were safe, free from any harm. Soon, the rumors of other lootings, Bolsheviks, the Reds dragging people to the commissar increased. Once, he heard the faraway ricochet of shots. It was a new sound. He kept walking then, faster. He never mentioned it to Julia. She was pregnant with Austin Jr., and he did not want to upset her in such a state. He didn’t speak to the rest of his family about it either.

  They came then. In the early spring. 1922. The mud of that season, in the midst of the thaw, was thick and slick. He heard the sloshing first. He drew the curtains back from the window and he could see their faces, coated with dirt, the earth staining their uniforms, their brows and hands. One of the men was eating an apple. Julia stood at the basin, scrubbing clothes on a washboard. She’d heard the sloshing too and a look passed between them he would never forget. It was as if they both knew, had been waiting for this moment and he’d thought then of all the ways they could’ve left, all the ways they could’ve been already gone from there.

  They were at the door. A loud knocking. Then they crowded in, four in total, their bayonets pointing. A strong scent of onion on the men, that and a chill blast of air—the Russian spring. They looted the whole house, what was left. Bayonets were thrust into icons, destroying the “beautiful corner.” They tore curtains, the lace shredded, hours he’d stared at that lace as a boy. Tables were upturned. The wardrobe fell to the floor, books were spilled, splayed open. Austin’s notebooks, engineering books, automobile textbooks. Nothing went untouched. The men with their bayonets.

  “They’d cut the air if they could,” a common phrase, he was now a witness to it.

  He was ordered outside. He expected them to make him kneel or bring him to the forest. Instead, he was forced to stand, watching them ruin the house.

  • • •

  HE REMEMBERS THE FEEL of water seeping through his felt boots. The chill of the April morning as they stood beneath an opaque sky hanging low over the hill that led to the church, the hill which held the last remaining patches of snow and ice. Above, a flock of birds—geese, sparrows—flying in interlocking V’s with a grace and ease in strict contrast to the clatter of furniture, all the splitting, splintering wood. Plates, cups shattering.

  One of the men emerged from the ruined house, his bayonet slung over his shoulder. In one hand he carried a book. He walked up to Austin and Julia, stood before them turning the pages of what Austin could now identify as an engineering manual. His dirty hands, earth beneath fingernails, his thumb purpled and black the color of plum was tough with calluses, his hardened fingertips pulled at the pages, opening the book at random, tearing the thin paper like onion skin.

  The fields were fallow. The horizon like the horizon of the ocean, endless. The man was turning the pages of the book. He sometimes licked his fingertip—a too-dainty gesture for a man so gruff. The thin paper crinkled in a breeze. He looked to Austin. Then to Julia. Back to the book. It was in English. An engineering manual from his courses in America. The thin pages caught in the breeze, rustling like one hundred accusations.

  “Spy,” the man said in Russian.

  • • •

  AUSTIN CAN SEE IN his mind’s eye, the leaving, the long walk to the commissar. Julia on the cart, his footsteps alongside the wooden wheels creaking every third step and his boots making a sucking sound as his soles sank into the mud. As he walked, he could see quite quickly what was before them along that road—more homes raided and looted, some already burning.

  “Julia. Do not look. Look to me, to me. Do not look.”

  Bodies lay on the ground, blood trickling out of a mouth, mixing with the white snow and mud. All the while the geese traced their V’s in the calm sky, and in the far distance he could see smoke rising from a stove in some home that still sat within its place of peace.

  He heard his mother sobbing, but he could not look behind as they’d left them. Gun shots in front and behind, but he could not look. If he did, he would have to run to them, would have been shot, and what of Julia, he’d thought, his footsteps alongside the wheels, she seven months pregnant. He focused forward. He set his mind to it. His eyes on his boots, one foot in front of the other.

  • • •

  NOW, HE DOESN’T CARE what people say. His life, he knows, is proof that men’s lives are ruled by chance. It was chance that saved him, saved them.

  • • •

  HIS BACK WAS TO the wall, a wall pocked with bullet holes, his body standing where other bodies had fallen. They were not allowed to lean against the wall. Instead, they held each other upright, shoulder to shoulder. Julia’s hand in his grasp, squeezing. He could feel her shaking. Five men gathered in a small half circle at the end of the line began addressing each person, asking questions. A bayonet tip scraped the ground, a scratching noise that grew louder as the men proceeded to first one person, then another. The commissar drew closer now, and one man collapsed out of fear or shock or a deep panic. Julia leaned up against Austin as the men passed their gazes over her. To Austin now. One, two steps and beyond him to the next man and the one after that. Then, a look back. A flicker of recognition. The commissar retraced his steps. He was in front of Austin now, Austin who kept his gaze on the ground, knowing that an eye lock was an easy provocation for a bayonet or bullet.

  “Look at me,” the commissar demanded. Austin lifted his gaze, met the commissar’s stare.

  “Bring them inside,” he ordered.

  • • •

  AUSTIN STOOD BEFORE the commissar’s desk. He could see the outline of absent icons that had once cluttered the walls with their gold, black, and bronze, now rectangles and squares of white. The one room smelled of pine and smoke and ink. Men in a corner were laughing. Julia leaned on him. She could hardly stand.

  “Please, let her sit. She is pregnant,” Austin said in a whisper.

  The commissar came in, looking first to Julia, then to Austin. The gaze lasted a minute.

  “Ustin!” he said. His hands fell hard on the desk, the paraffin lamp trembled and its light flickered a moment before settling. “Ustin, Ustin,” he kept saying, smiling. And then, to the men standing idle in the corner, “Bring her a chair, then go. Leave!” Austin could not get his mind, his thoughts to catch up with this new, drastic shift in tone.

  “You don’t remember me. It’s okay, it’s okay,” the commissar said, “I know you. That is all that matters. Ustin Alexandrovich Voronkov. Village of Varvarovka. You went to America.” He slapped Austin on the back. He moved fast, with energy that frightened Austin. And then a face emerged out of the fan of wrinkles now settled around the eyes, the coarser skin of the high cheekbones, the broad brow. Distant shots broke the joy of recognition. Austin could think of the wall only, the bullet holes as he stared deep into the shifty black pupils of his childhood friend.

  • • •

  CABBAGE SOUP, PORK, POTATOES, raspberry jam. And tea. Vodka. A feast—a meal worthy of reunion. He’d believed they were being led to death and then they threw them a party. It didn’t matter to the commissar that Austin’s brother was a White officer, that Austin was in fact a kind of enemy. He was a private landowner after all. No. He’d just been pleased by
some memories of childhood.

  They slept on good clean sheets. All the while, Austin cautious, believing his friend would change his mind, luring him into some trap and that, at any moment, he’d be led to execution. He was shifty and besides, Austin didn’t remember any of his memories, though he pretended to and thought, many times, of what he recalled when he recognized Austin, what images came up for him—some kindness bestowed, an afternoon of unbridled joy, an adventure in the forests or fields. It was distinct enough though, a memory that makes a life turn on a dime, a memory that meant—when one skins it all down to the bare bone—well, the difference between life and death.

  They covered them in rugs. Austin and Julia took a train to Odessa under rugs. That way, they would avoid the gendarmes searching out anyone attempting to flee across the now closed borders. A ridiculous idea, Austin thought, surely they’d be found. They held each other tight, one rug after another piled on top. Under woven rugs—they loaded them onto the train. The discomfort for poor Julia, terrified she’d lose the baby through that train ride. Hours of must and cold. And then the man who knew, the one who had been bribed to smuggle them out, collected his rugs and they were loaded onto the dock in Odessa, where they would be safe in the port city for the time being. Enough time for Julia to have her baby. A week later, they boarded a boat to Constantinople. With their newborn, they sailed down the Bosporus, gorging themselves on pistachios and apricots in the bazaar. There was little else to eat.

  They were greeted by other Russians. Exiles, refugees, émigrés. These words had not yet stuck. They were not yet uttered. It was only 1923. For the time being, they were still Russians. They would return. “A country run by barbarians cannot last,” they said. They said it in the streets. In the markets. In the rooming houses where countesses didn’t clean—“Why should I clean? I’ll be going back to Russia soon.”