The Invention of Exile Read online

  “I do.”

  “When did you arrive?”

  “A few days ago.”

  “And you are staying in the city?”

  “Yes. With a Mexican family. I work too.”

  “Work?”

  “I told you in my letter.”

  “You must work?”

  “It’s the only way I could come here.” He frowned again. This time an expression of deep perplexity. He could not hold her gaze for too long, as if the very sight of her confused him. Instead, he would study her face with intensity, leaning on the table, and then he’d shift his gaze—now to the silverware, or to his hands, or to the left and right of him for a while, now retreating in gesture and in mind. She watched him and waited for him to come back to wherever he went in his thoughts, deep into memory she assumed, but what it was he was thinking about she couldn’t fathom. Her mother had told her so little, and when she ever did begin to recount their story she’d begin to cry and this upset both of them so much that Vera never pressed her further. Now she saw that she might have difficulty with her father too. She’d try to help him though. If he could be home, with her mother, with all of them, surrounded by the family, given work, something to occupy his fine mind, as her mother always called it, then nostalgia (the Russian disease, her mother said) would fade and he could focus, she hoped, on the present, the here and now.

  “Here is a little something from Mother,” she said, pulling a small pink envelope from her purse. It was a check for ten dollars. He opened the envelope, looked at the check, and shook his head, a deep frown showing the long creases along the sides of his mouth. She knew he had worked, in the copper mines of Cananea, until the Depression hit and he’d lost his job, but now she had no idea how he took care of himself, if he did at all.

  “Daddy. Tell me what you do, where you work, how do you take care of yourself?”

  “If you send my designs to the patent agencies, like I’ve told you to do, she wouldn’t have to work.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “She could have a house, you see, and then a garden. Like we had in the Ukraine. Oh, you could spit on that soil and something would grow.” He laughed and she couldn’t help but laugh too.

  “Why don’t you do as I say?” A sudden anger in his voice, which had a deep baritone to it and a tendency to resonate. It caused her to jump, others looking at their table.

  “Daddy, please.” She lowered her voice, hoping that he’d follow her lead. “Where do you live?”

  “In the center here. A boardinghouse.”

  “And for work? You are not at the electric company any longer?”

  “Repairs.”

  “I see.”

  “I do okay. I need very little, you see.”

  “Yes,” she said, but could see right away that he’d need several things—a new pair of shoes for certain, a new suit, a haircut.

  “Daddy, I have some pictures. Of the family, the boys, Mother and me. That is, if you think you’d like to see them.”

  “Your mother?” he asked, an expectant, pleading look.

  “Yes. I have photographs, of back home,” she said, reaching into her purse. “I have a whole bunch of them right here.” She pulled out a large white envelope, placing it on the table and pushing it toward him. He didn’t motion for it so she picked it up once more and removed the packet of photos bound by a thin grosgrain blue ribbon. Her mother had done that, she thought, and then felt her eyes well up thinking of what she’d make of her husband now. She undid the ribbon and began to place each photo before him. One at a time.

  “Wait,” he said, hand raised, “I would like to order some more coffee.”

  “Yes, yes, yes of course. In all the excitement I’d forgotten where we were,” Vera said, looking up from their table, sitting tall in her chair, trying to beckon one of the waiters. The orders were placed, Vera doing the ordering, her father sinking back in his chair, staring at the silverware, never once looking at the waiter, even when addressed directly. She observed him when their coffees arrived. He used half the slim carafe of cream, and, from the blue and black ceramic sugar bowl, four heaping spoonfuls of sugar, stirring and not bothering to remove his spoon from the cup. He slurped when he drank, hunched over his cup, he seemed unable to sit upright and drink from the mug as she did now. Coffee spilled here and there from the rim.

  She moved their coffee cups to the side of the table and brushed away the sugar crystals that had accumulated in a fine granular surface. She laid two photos down at a time.

  “This here?” He pointed to one photograph. Vera winced, closed her eyes and then told him.

  “Yes. That’s Mother.”

  “Julia?”

  “Yes. Daddy, we sent you photographs. Over the years, did you receive them?”

  “How changed.”

  “Did you?”

  “Oh, yes. I got them all.”

  “Good,” she said, doubting this as she watched him look at her mother’s photograph, searching out the face he’d known.

  “This is me with Leo, you see,” Vera continued. “We are at the park. This was about, oh, five years ago.”

  “Yes, yes. Beardsley Park, is it?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “I think this is—”

  “Beardsley Park, yes. I courted your mother there. We walked and walked till dusk, every Sunday. Without fail. Has she told you that?”

  “Yes,” Vera lied, finding it difficult to explain that her mother rarely spoke of him, and when she did out would come a torrent of tears and her lips would draw into a fine thin line. Braced is how Vera always thought of that expression.

  “This is Leo’s photo from the Navy.”

  “The Navy? Let me see here,” he said, sitting forward, smiling now. “So changed, so changed.” A group of men stand up to leave, a loud crush of chairs scraping. One of them is calling for the waiter, a booming “mesero” echoing.

  “Daddy, you’d like to come home, right?”

  “If they’ll let me.”

  “I’m here to make sure that happens.”

  “Oh now, how? What can you do?”

  “Well, I will start with the Embassy.”

  He considered this, nodding his head, which went from an affirmative, to a kind of defeated shake of the head. Then he leaned close to her, his voice lowered to a near whisper.

  “If you do get me home,” he said, his eyes wide, “will your mother accept me?”

  “Oh, Daddy. What a silly thing to say. Of course she’ll have you. She’s written letters her whole life to get you home.”

  • • •

  VERA AND AUSTIN left Sanborns, the crowded clatter of the place at their backs as they stepped into dim streets.

  He was walking too fast for her.

  “Father, please slow down”—she laughed a bit—“your one step is equal to my three.” He stopped, satchel beneath his arm, his body propelled forward. His face as Vera drew close was expectant. Eyes elevated with some inner blaze of thought she could not fathom.

  “The windows close soon,” he explained, and then she fell into step with him and then lost pace again, his stride though smaller still overtaking her own. He dashed through the post office entrance forgetting himself, and doubled back to wait for Vera, clearly unused to having a companion, she thought. They walked through the lobby and he led her to one of the side tables, elbow high. A few others milled about them, but for the most part, the post office, near closing hour, was quiet. She watched as he opened his satchel, rummaging through to find his letters, the envelopes. His fingers marked faint smudges along his, for the most part, clean, unblemished drafts.

  “Daddy. Your fingers are a mess. Let me help you,” she said to him.

  “I didn’t notice,” he said, dropping the papers and turning over his hand
s.

  “No. Of course not, but you certainly can’t send them with such a mess of prints on them. Look how your fingerprints are all over this one.” She took a draft from him and inspected it a bit more closely. She sighed. “Here, give them all to me,” she said, spreading out the papers, envelopes, and letters, each addressed to the Ambassador, one to the Patent Commissioner, Washington, D.C., the General Consul, D.F. He stood empty-handed next to her, watching. She knew these letters and the repeated pleas and explanations, how he’d applied for citizenship, how he was married to a citizen of the United States of America. They were the same letters he’d send home to them all, the same ones that made her mother down for days. To see them here now, while she was standing right beside him, made her want to shake him and make him see that no amount of his inventions would allow him back in. But she didn’t want to bring all that up just yet and spoil their reunion. She felt her eyes smart with tears. She gritted her teeth. There were the specifications for each invention—the electric welder with its cylinder and flame. He was mailing off the propeller designs too. To Vera, they were all a geometrical conundrum. A series of circles and arcs. Arrows and numbers. She could sense him, see him out of the corner of her eye, watching. He was making sure she was careful, that she was placing the correct drafts with the correct letters. She knew, and it broke her heart to admit it, that all these efforts of his were futile. She wanted to take his hands and plead with him, tell him the truth, “These inventions will not get you into the U.S.” Oh, but it would destroy him she knew.

  “Daddy,” she began instead, “you know, you’re sending so much of yourself to these patent agents, and now the ambassador too?”

  “They will soon see,” he said, cutting her off, not meeting her gaze. He nodded his head with a little grunt of confirmation, his eyes focused on the designs she was placing in the last of the envelopes. She set all the slim bundles one atop the other and then slid them down the table where he stood shifting his weight. She watched him in periphery. He took the envelopes in hand, head cocked, eyes narrowing, double-checking the addresses. He looked to her now and smiled, taking two steps back. He turned to cross the large, empty lobby to the bank of postal windows. A wide stride, the anxiety in the bend of lanky, thin joints. She drew her hand away from the table, feeling a heaviness descend as she took her time walking to the main entrance, all the while wondering and worried about who exactly her father had become.

  • • •

  THE PROPELLER WAS FOR his Sonnie. They were good ideas. Useful inventions—for engineering, for ships and building. He was ashamed of their presentation now. He’d tried to get the best paper, always in shorter and shorter supply, his own funds hardly covered one ream. He’d had no proper presentation materials to work with either. He had explained as much in the patent letters. Once, years ago, he did have a typewriter—a broken, discarded one that he’d found behind a printing house. He’d taken it back to his shop, fixed the keys, though the E never worked, so he’d had to painstakingly insert a series of hand-printed e’s. He’d not realized how many e’s one used up in the course of official correspondence and soon empathized with the typewriter’s former owner, deciding to also discard the old, ineffectual machine. He hadn’t used a typewriter since. Relied instead on his fine print—neat, capital letters. The letters were legible, if a bit amateurish. But any good patent agent would soon see the value in his ideas and not take it as an affront to the profession, or at least that is what he hoped.

  And now these fingerprints. He hadn’t even considered those. Perhaps all these years no one ever looked at his designs because they were such a mess of smudges and blotches. Or had some shrewd patent clerk, seeing the unimpressive presentation of Austin’s ideas, seen a way to take advantage, to polish up these very drafts, passing them off as his own? These damn men in power, with positions, he thought, raising up his foot and stamping it down, muttering under his breath. My God, what if Vera was right about the fingerprints? He felt a fool, a deep shame. How had he not been more careful?

  He was still standing in front of the post office, clasping his satchel in one arm, his other hand stuffed into his pocket. He’d said good-bye to Vera and she had promised she would return the next day. Vera. His own daughter. Dropped into his life in an instant. He watched her leave. She kept turning around. A reassurance. There was a knot in his stomach, wondering how he could be sure of her promise. He walked across the street, deciding on the long way back to the boardinghouse, feeling somehow more vacant now that she had gone. He’d begun to feel joy while with her at Sanborns and to now be back in the city—alone—returned him to his usual state. It seemed all the more unbearable now knowing he’d had a rightful connection to someone here. He now meant something to someone—his own child. Her sudden presence made the years rush at him. He thought of all the time he’d been in the city, and wondered if it would simply amount to one of many stories of this country—one enfolded into its highways, colonias, ruins, parks, waters, the cantinas and pulquerías, the markets and storefronts—or was it his story? He found that he really was unable to separate the two. True, he had tried to preserve himself, to attune his body, which had its own memory, to seasons left behind, but he soon learned the futility of such a practice. The city had worked over and through him—its vastness as indifferent as the ocean. We are defined by our surroundings as much as by our pasts, the way a river stone is worn smooth by currents. Mexico City had left its mark, indelible.

  He continued walking. His antidote to solitude. He walked as the old walk. Miles a day. He walked to occupy the hours, to evade loneliness, to practice patience. And he was still walking on this day to deflect the sharper sting of loneliness that pervaded his every footstep, walking to reach the next day when she would come back to him again and take him for a proper meal as she’d said. He walked through three colonias—Centro, Zona Rosa, to La Condesa. He was now passing stores selling tawdry rubbish and bric-a-brac. Windows piled high with bags, beads, feathers, dried eucalyptus, branches, packs of cards, baskets, clay pots. He stopped in front of one storefront. His face in the glass. The gauntness of it. High cheekbones even more defined. A sadness in the corner of a blue eye. His thoughts thrust up against the store window, his mind holding a history that suddenly seemed to merge with the storefront wares on gaudy display—the bright green garden hoses, yellow wire bird feeders, spools of copper, pinwheels, baby dolls, coffee cans.

  What if she was able to help him? Bring him back? He gave in to the idea, lingered for a moment on that possibility. A kind of ideal he sees suddenly as a shining triangle, a certain, clear shape of something that had been vague and shadowed, but then another stream of thought came to him like a cloudburst; it shook him, caused a shudder. What if he would die in Mexico City? He sat with this, the discomfort of it palpable in the tightening between the shoulder blades, at his neck. A gentle wind swept some marigolds off a rooftop. From a shrine, he thought. The golden, oblong petals falling looked like they were disintegrating and happy with their descent. He smiled, the release visceral. Don’t let your mind get into brooding, he scolded himself, thinking of the world he’d built up around him here. He knew that it was not quite a bad life, even if he’d never forget the life that now lay back in a distant past, nearly imaginary, though he could see the street still, the house and those windows, and now Vera was here. His own Vera. His baby girl now a young lady. Something lodged deep within loosened. He kept walking, unmoored, lightened, the petals continuing to fall from the rooftop in an orange cascade behind him—a falling he could no longer see.

  • • •

  HE STOOD NOW AT the corner of his street, could see that someone sat in the alcove of the window, legs crossed as he has often sat. He took a few steps, waiting to focus his gaze. Were they Jack’s polished shoes? No. He recognized the leather sandals, the curve of those calves.

  “Austin.” Anarose walked toward him now. “There you are. Why are you closed?”

&
nbsp; “Please, come inside,” he said, opening the grate. She shook her head no, remaining out on the sidewalk. Then she leaned back against the wall, arms crossed. She was pouting.

  “I need to speak with you.”

  “I saw you,” she began. “On my way here. Standing at the post office with some gringa woman.”

  “I can explain.”

  “I feel I have a right to—”

  “No. You must listen to what I need to tell you.” She did not look him in the eye. He walked into the shop, she followed and he turned to her.

  “She’s my daughter.”

  “Your daughter?” Her arms fell to her sides, palms open, released. Her eyebrows arched.

  “Yes.”

  “I thought your family died.”

  “Die? Who told you they died?”

  “They were killed, no?”

  “By who I’d like to know!”

  “I hear from the women in the neighborhood. They all say you lost a family, well, I just assumed.”

  “No. They’re alive. They are in the U.S.”

  “And you. Here,” she said. “So you will make your fortune, yes, and you will go to your family too. It’s as I said, right? Leave Mexico.”

  “It’s not as simple as that. I’m not allowed into the country.”

  “Tell me, why don’t you cross the border?”

  “I must go legally.”

  “It’s quite simple if one knows the areas.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “You know something—you are a man with loss of your own making,” she says, backing out the door. He watches her leave, her footsteps slow and certain, her back rigid and arched as she walks away in what he interprets as impatience.

  • • •

  HE JUST TOOK NOTICE, hardly realized, but there before him was Chapultepec, some of the locals already filtering out to venture home while the Americans were still in the park, playing ball. He’d no idea how many of them were down here—actors, screenwriters. He strolled closer, could hear their banter, the jokes of others gathered nearer to the attempt at a field.