Sean Michaels - Us Conductors

I have never told anyone this.

I did not want to go home. I didn’t want to face the carousel of students, the visits from friends, the expectant eyes of Lavinia Williams, Lavinia Termen, who loved me as if we were young lovers, everything within reach. Instead of facing life and marriage, I hunched in a booth at L’Aujourd’hui, ordering cups of black tea, lemon squares, bowls of potato chips. I sketched plans on paper placemats. I pretended to myself that I was hard at work, waved excuses to Lavinia as I hurried out the door every morning, but there were no revelations on that glossy tabletop. My ideas were desperations. I let them blot salt crumbs and spilled tea.

When the restaurant closed, around midnight, I packed up my things, plinked pencils into my briefcase. I meandered home through the blue streets. Usually Lavinia would be waiting. On the final block I would ask and ask the air for my wife to be asleep, dreaming, folded in sheets. Sometimes I would pass the house and double back, to approach again. Let her be sleeping. Let her be sleeping . On many of those nights I would come in and climb the stairs, turn off the lamps, stand at her feet. She always slept on her belly, like something brought in from the shore.

“Hard day?” she’d ask, the other times. She would crouch beside me as I removed my shoes. “You need to take it easier, Lyova.”

I was deeply in debt. Even living rent-free in my friends’ house, I was drowning in everyday expenses, equipment rentals, interest payments. With money she thought we had, Lavinia bought houseplants, rambling gardenias. Every day our rooms looked more alive, blooming, budding. Every week I searched for someone else to borrow money from, laughing about IOUs, lying about overdue commissions. I owed tens of thousands in taxes. My handlers at L’Aujourd’hui told me I should leave the United States, return to Russia. I refused. I always refused. At Lavinia’s ballet performances I sat with her friends, hands on thighs, watching the dancers twist in the air, watching Lavinia turn from the back of the stage to stare into the dark, the crowd’s dark, where we could not be seen.

BERIA GAVE ME A special office in Marenko’s secret wing. I had an orange pass with my name and Yukachev’s signature. The other engineers asked what I was working on now and I just shrugged, lifted and lowered my shoulders. They let the matter drop. I was not the only zek with a mysterious new commission: Rubin had been transferred to a facility across town, for something to do with hydrogen isotopes.

My work was not with atoms. Every day I showed an attendant my little orange card and entered an almost empty laboratory — four rows of desks, shelves of equipment, an incongruous crystal chandelier. Stalin glowered from a wide, dark painting. I shared the lab with one other engineer, a radar man, and a lanky free worker whose job it was to watch us. We spent our days in separate, silent labour. It never felt like the room had enough air. I ate lunch in the same kitchen where I had sat with Beria, chewing softly beside the stoves. The windows had been closed and locked. If I needed new components, new machines, I submitted a written request. Every requisition was granted.

My task was simple, but then it was not so simple: a bug that required no power source. That required no wires leading in or out. That required no tapes, and scarcely any metal. An invisible, imperceptible, inert device that remembers any secrets that are told to it.

I think it is probably the best thing I ever made.

ONE MORNING IN NEW YORK the owner of L’Aujourd’hui came up to my table, drying a plate, like a character in a play.

“Hello,” he said, in Russian.

“Hello,” I said, in English.

He dried his plate.

“Gotta ask,” he said. “You okay, bud?”

I did not lift my head from my work. I was drawing a semicircle. “Yes.”

Mud Tony shrugged. “All right,” he said. He began to move away.

I raised my face and squinted at him. “Can I ask you a question?”

“What’s that?”

“Should I go back to Russia?”

He laughed. “How should I know?”

“I’m just asking,” I said.

“Huh.” Mud Tony tugged at the ends of his lips. “Is there anything keeping you here?”

“Yes,” I said.

I felt my face was very sad. I tried to smile.

The radio was singing a stupid love song.

I saw him see my wedding ring. “Well,” he said. He cleared his throat. “No. You should stay.”

I looked at the placemat, covered in fragile marks. “Of course,” I said.

“At least until things are worked out.”

“Of course,” I repeated. “Yes.”

In early evening, golden hour, I called you from a public telephone. The Plaza Hotel’s booths were tucked behind tall windows and there were waving trees, newspaper sellers, a million people pouring past. I took a deep breath and then immediately felt intoxicated.

I said, “Clara?”

You said, “What?

Yes?

Who is this?

I can’t hear you.”

“It’s Leon.”

“Leon?”

“Yes.”

“Oh! Hello.”

“Hello.”

“How’s it going?”

I said, “Clara, I love you.”

“What?”

“I love—”

“What? I can’t hear.”

“I love you!” I shouted.

“Leon, I’m sorry, I can’t—”

I put down the receiver. My breathing was wild and shallow. I went out of the Hotel Plaza and onto Fifth Avenue and I ran straight through the city to your house, down alleys and over fissures, swift as a blazing rocket. I was ragged and sheer and decided. The knocker was a lion’s head. I took the lion’s head in my hand and banged on your door.

Birds flew up from the eaves.

You did not appear at the door. You appeared on the balcony, above my head, leaning against an iron railing.

“Leon,” you said. You were wearing swinging pearl earrings. “What are you doing here?”

Your skirt was the same dark blue as the sky.

“I love you, Clara,” I said.

You did not tremble when I said it.

You did not move.

You looked at me.

“I never stopped loving you,” I said.

Your fingers tightened around the railing.

“We are married , Leon.”

“I thought I could escape,” I said, in a clear voice. “That we could slip away from each other.”

You began to say something.

“But I never escaped , Clara. I never did.”

“Leon, I was just a kid when I met you.”

You trailed off.

“Yes,” I said.

I waited for you.

You said into the air, “Your feelings were always so certain .

Like you already knew. But I didn’t know anything yet.”

A truck rattled past.

“Run away with me,” I said.

“You have a wife.”

“I am forty-two years old, Clara, and my heart has never felt real except when I am with you.”

You took your hands from the railing. “You’re a crazy person.”

“No!” I shouted. “I’m not, it’s not — This is the plainest—”

You were furious then, lips drawn in a line. “You stroll through life like you’re indestructible. Like an indestructible — an indestructible blockhead , Leon. Immune to everything: to responsibility, to patience. Always wanting, never listening, never—”

“I am not indestructible,” I said.

“Like you can just walk away from a life. Like promises don’t matter. You are married , Leon. I am married. Not to each other. Wishing doesn’t change that.”