In the kitchen I put on a pot of coffee. The grains were odourless, like chips of gravel. I leaned into the counter beside the stove, listened to the water boil. From somewhere else in the house I heard a faint noise. “Lavinia?” I called again.
The kettle began to shrill. I poured. I went downstairs, and downstairs, and downstairs, to the grey parlour. It was cold now; the heat wave had passed. The house felt empty. I shivered. “Lavinia?” I murmured. Someone was standing by the barren fireplace. It was not my wife. I found myself in a defensive stance, holding my cup of coffee. The man had his back to me. “Hello, Lev,” he murmured. He was about my height and build, with a collared shirt, his sleeves rolled up.
“Who’s there?” We were speaking Russian.
He turned. The man in my parlour was the man who also called himself Lev. The man I’d met at Mud Tony’s, with Karl and Karl, on the day I committed a murder. His head was shaved. He wore square glasses. I said, “Where is Lavinia?”
He cleared his throat. “Dancing.”
“What do you mean, ‘dancing’?”
He smiled very, very slowly, as if he was still listening to me speak. “She is at rehearsal.”
My voice was level. “How did you get in?”
“I let myself in,” he said. He cleared his throat again. I scanned the room, looking for any other men. We were alone. He massaged his right forearm. “You need to leave the country.”
“No,” I said. “You should talk to Pash.”
“I spoke to him yesterday afternoon.” He took a breath. “I spoke to him again last night.”
“Why isn’t he here?”
“He was sent away.” Lev pursed his lips. “I do not think you will see him again.”
I was still in my defensive stance, left foot leading, right knee bent. I was still holding my cup of coffee, ridiculous. He noticed my pose, gave a kind of laugh. In the next beat his smile hollowed. “It is time to conclude your American adventure.”
“If—” I began.
“Lev,” he said, with unassailable patience, “it is time.”
I gestured at the parlour table — the Times, teacups, sheet music, Slominsky’s wedding invitation. A pair of Lavinia’s ballet shoes curled beside the chair. “How can I leave?”
“Tonight,” he replied. “Some men will come this afternoon to collect your work. Others have already been sent to the garage, the storage warehouse. You will collect your papers. Do not use the telephone.”
“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.”