“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.
It was late that night when my wife came home. She was distracted. She was hungry, angry with her choreographer. On the top floor I prepared an omelette. I chopped onions. She prowled the crowded kitchen, unaware that the house had been excavated, its secrets parcelled up. She ate with knife and fork, talking at me; she did not search my face. Later we lay in bed, side by side. I wondered what I would write in a letter to Henry Solomonoff, to Missy and Bugs Rusk, if I were writing letters. Would I apologize to the Rosens, send them schematics for a new theremin? Would I thank the Bolotines? Lavinia stretched her arm across my chest. I gazed at the ceiling. The clocks were all ticking. “Let’s take a holiday to Haiti,” she said to me. “For the winter.”
We were in a house of dreams. When I was gone, Walter Rosen would take it back.
At 11:28 p.m., into the darkness, the doorbell buzzed. Lavinia stirred. “Ignore it,” she said. I remained frozen. After a few minutes, the door buzzed again. I got up. “What is it?” she said.
“The door.”
“What time is it?”
“Never mind,” I said.
I put on my trousers and belt. I put on the jacket I had set aside. Lavinia shifted. In a parched voice she asked, “Are you getting dressed?”
I tied my shoes. “Yes.”
The door buzzed again.
“For the door,” I said.
She propped herself up on her elbows. I went downstairs, all the way downstairs, drawing open the door and pulling in all that moonlight. Three men awaited me. “Comrade,” they said.
I let out a deep breath. “Here you are,” I said. They hesitated when I invited them inside. They wanted to know if I was ready
“Yes,” I said, “just a moment.”
They said we had to leave. “Yes,” I said again. I stood in my parlour, looking around, unsure of what I was seeking, what I was waiting for. I heard Lavinia’s voice from upstairs. I called her. I rubbed my face. I gave the men a suitcase that I had hidden in a broom closet. It held more clothes, my shaving things. I gave them a case containing a Skylark Mk II typewriter. They took these things without speaking. Then Lavinia was on the stairs behind us. She wore a shawl across her shoulders. She was long and young, ravishing. She seemed like something borrowed, in that moment; something I had borrowed and was now returning. Her brow was knotted, her wide hazel eyes hardening.
“I have to go,” I told her.
“Go where?”
“They are taking me away,” I said. “I do not know when I will be back.”
“What do you mean?” she said.
“I do not know if I will be back.”
She came down the stairs. “What do you mean you do not know if you will be back? Who are these men?”
The men took a step toward me, instantly an entourage.
“We must go,” one of them said to me, to her, in accented English.
“Where are you taking my husband?” Lavinia demanded, in Russian now.
“Goodbye,” I said.
“Lev!”
They had taken me by the arms and were guiding me to the door. She came at us, tried to pull them from my shoulders. She was stronger than they expected and abruptly we were standing together, in the night’s halo, the two of us.
“I have to go,” I murmured, and I saw her jaw set, saw frozen water at her eyes. “I have to go.” With this last speaking, she suddenly became smaller.
She kissed me once, fiercely. She had questions in her face.
“I love you,” she said. Her glance flicked to the other men.
“Good night,” I said. I swallowed.
She grabbed the scruff of my coat and stayed that way, holding me, until one of the men removed her hand.
I went away with them.
WE DROVE THROUGH the city’s darkness. Young men on street corners, holding cigarettes. Dogs in the middle of the road. Hobos in doorways, curled on their sides. Neon signs spelled words. POMADE, CABARET, CHOP SUEY, each in red, each somehow a goodbye. The men I was with didn’t speak. I wondered whether I had seen my last familiar face? Was I already given over to strangers? New York flickered outside my window. Now I was thirsty for farewells.
We dipped into the Holland Tunnel.
I leaned back in my seat. I looked at the wedding ring on my finger. How long would I wear it? Perhaps they would send for Lavinia after all. Perhaps Lavinia would follow, in a fortnight, her trunk packed with sundresses. Perhaps she would dwell with me in the hills beside Lake Ladoga, planting dill and tarragon, while I strained with wires and tubes and the distance of you.
We emerged in New Jersey, where the sky was pricked with twenty thousand stars. The road lifted us up and set us down and we followed the bend of the water. It was like a sea. Slowly, I remembered: it is a sea, it is a sea. The lights streaked and glittered, New York City across the bay, and then everything beautifully deafened by the roar of a locomotive running beside the road, fine and sparking, iron. I realized I was going home. Home to Russia, the motherland, canyons and cities and three million rivers, rushing. The Physico-Technical Institute. Sasha and Helena. Blini from the stall on Kolokolnaya Street. Springtime and the bitter winter that makes enchantment out of candlelight.