Sean Michaels - Us Conductors

“The telephone? Why?”

“A ship is waiting for you. You are on the crew roster as a captain’s assistant. A log keeper. You are not a captain’s assistant: you will be confined to your cabin.”

I swallowed. “To Leningrad?”

“Yes,” Lev said. “Indirectly. It is a six-week journey.”

I listened to my breath. They were high, short breaths, as if I were being kept alive by consistency, persistence, the taking and giving of very small things.

“Do not tell anyone that you are leaving,” he said.

“My wife,” I said.

“We will send for her later.”

“When?” I said.

“A fortnight.”

I realized that he was lying. I said, “Why not tell her?”

Lev looked at the floor. He pushed his thumb across his lips. “The United States Internal Revenue Service,” he said. “The California Detentions Bureau. International Madison Bank. Walmor Incorporated. Isaac and Harry M. Marks. Commerce and Burr. I could go on. You owe a great deal of money. Does she know?”

“No,” I said.

He picked up a rock from my mantel, a brick of fossilized limestone that Schillinger had given me.

“Also, I understand that you killed a man from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” He lifted his head. There were bags under his eyes. “Do not tell anyone that you are leaving.”

In the next long seconds, we gazed at each other. I didn’t say anything. Then I nodded. I looked around the room. None of these things mattered to me anymore.

ONLY A LITTLE WHILE has passed since I stood with serious Lev in the parlour, giving up on America. Sometimes I lie in my bunk and wonder how I conceded; other times I ask myself why it did not happen sooner. Yet I feel calmly certain, writing this log: I had no choice. I had no choice . My enemies were too numerous; I had exhausted my reprieves. As a missioned visitor to the United States, I did not belong there. My past and future belong to Russia, where I will wait, loving you, for the fulfilment of all this roving.

Love is strengthened by distance. Dreams have weight and velocity. They are signals, promises. They have a destination. One night we will know no doubts, feel no foreign forces, and our particles will come to rest.

WHEN LEV DEPARTED, I followed him out the door. The air was thick. I watched as he sloughed away up the street, holding out his hand as a goodbye. I saw that my Cadillac was gone. Maybe it was with Pash, on the way to whatever came next. When I came back inside I lit a fire in the hearth, just in case, just in case I needed to burn anything.

Men came to the house that afternoon, as Lev had promised. They were not bungling goons: they were unfussy professionals, efficient. The first car carried chroniclers, note takers; they brought folders, labels, archival boxes. They collected the papers from my filing cabinets and sorted them by topic, sealed the boxes tight. I called Pash. Of course no one answered. Pash had left my life. A large truck arrived with six more men. These ones disassembled equipment, loaded it onto pallets, into pine crates, nailed the crates shut. They asked me, “What is going?” and I answered by pointing. I did not need everything. I needed the first things, the last things, the best things. Some inventions were toys, redundancies, dead ends. But other devices might have a use, tomorrow.

In the cellar I shoved aside old boxes of RCA theremin kits and hauled out a trunk, the same one I had brought from Leningrad. It was the brown of wild horses. When I had come, I had filled it with trousers, shirts, shoes, a tool kit. Now I wanted it to take a million things — photographs, ticket stubs, an automat’s receipt for two plates of pie. I looked at the faded corner of the basement where I used to lift weights, complete the four forms. A wooden dummy languished beside a lamp. I had neglected my kung-fu. Perhaps in Leningrad I would resume my practice. I wondered if my broad-shouldered teacher would still be there. If Lughur and Moritz still grappled like rams. I went to the wall, where I had pinned my etching of Leung Jan. He seemed balanced on a precipice. I took it down and put it in the trunk.

Around four o’clock, I took a taxi to the college where Schillinger was teaching. I found his office and waited for him to finish class. He darkened when he saw me. “Lev. Is everything all right?”

Behind his door’s frosted glass, I told him I was leaving.

“When?”

“Tonight.”

“Bullshit.”

This made me laugh. Because he was right: what bullshit. I laughed at its absurdity, and Schillinger watched me laugh, until his grave expression wavered and he began to laugh too. We leaned with our hands on his desk, laughing, laughing, subsiding. It was silent. I stared at my knuckles. What would we say now? What should we say?

“Leningrad?” he murmured.

“Yes.”

“I will visit.”

“Come for the white nights,” I said.

“Yes.”

We raised our heads. In an awkward gesture I reached to shake his hand. “I’ll call Frances,” Schillinger said. “We should have a farewell drink.”

“I can’t,” I said. “There is too much to do.”

I saw him looking around the room, searching for a memento to give me, something. Finally, he pulled a book from a stack of papers. “Ah! Here.” It was his own new monograph. The Second Half of History: Art in the Electronic Age . “Just like one of our conversations,” he said, “only you can keep it on your nightstand.”

“Wonderful,” I said.

“Yes.”

We shook hands another time.

“Don’t tell anyone I came here,” I said.

I TOOK A CAB ACROSS TOWN, unfolding another of the bills Walter Rosen had given me. “Yes, here’s fine,” I said. I reached forward to pay the driver. As I got out I saw Schillinger’s book left behind, on the seat. I closed the door. I watched the taxi glide away.

I stood before the building where you lived with your husband, Robert Rockmore. I lifted the heavy knocker, a brass lion’s head, and knocked. I did not expect an answer. This story required me to come here, to knock on the white oak door. It did not require anyone to answer. But then I heard a sound, a man’s cough, and the door opened. There he was, younger and taller than I remembered.

“Mr Rockmore,” I said.

“Yes?”

My mouth twitched, flinched almost, as if someone had swung at me. “Is your wife at home?”

His gaze tightened.

“I know you,” he said.

“Yes.”

We faced each other across the threshold.

“I could kill you,” I said.

“What?”

“Or I could send her a message and you would never know. It would go right through you.”

Something was gathering behind Robert Rockmore’s eyes, something weaker than wrath. He worked his lips, choosing a riposte.

I beat him to it. “I am leaving this country,” I said. “I will never need to come back.”

He took a breath. “She never talks about you,” he said.

“Of course she doesn’t,” I said.

Then he slapped me, strongly, with the palm of his hand. And I punched him in the solar plexus, hard. He doubled over. I shoved him by the head, down into the sidewalk’s smears.

There was a moment, and then he said, “I’ll call the fucking cops.”

I stood over him. My jaw twinged where he’d hit me. I swallowed and felt my heart diving, diving. I wanted to weep, Clara, great grey tears. “Right through you,” I repeated, in a thick voice.