The Invention of Exile by Vanessa Manko Read Free Book Online Page B

not left or right, but straight ahead.
Tout droit
he thinks, remembering that was the first phrase he’d comprehended in French, those years ago on the tightly wound, cobblestoned streets of the ninth arrondissement in Paris. Hungry and in search of work, cold and bewildered by the incomprehensible streets of another foreign city. And now here he is,
tout droit, tout droit,
he thinks as he walks, laughing at himself for the sudden switch of language, not straight ahead, or in Russian, how does one say it? But never mind that he thinks, he has to now calmly do an about-face and pretend as if he were walking the other way and now no longer
tout droit
because in his disorientation, in his wanderings and his furtive, crazed walk (half run) to get away, he’s unknowingly stumbled to where he stands now—before him, just a few yards ahead, sits the building he often walks twenty minutes out of his way to avoid: the Soviet Embassy. His heart nearly gushes in his ears. He sees the steps to the front door, the sheen of the heavy thick wood and the brass doorknob. He can see two figures at the bottom of the steps, hands in coat pockets, one man nodding his head, the other suddenly giving out a loud laugh. Austin freezes. He really cannot pass in front of them. He would not be surprised if his name were printed on some large banner, a kind of indictment. He dares not look in the direction of the embassy. He’ll instead feign nonchalance, pass by it, pretending that he does not care in the slightest if his name is written in big, bold block letters, all in black, on a three-foot-high canvas banner like a call to arms—VORONKOV.
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    T O SEE HIS STREET after the evening’s wandering is a relief. He feels lucky for at least that, to see the recognizable shape of the buildings, their jagged silhouettes edging sky. The Cantina de los Remedios. Its laughter and voices fall out the lighted windows like mouths. It reaches him, draws him into the warmth, the stale, layered smell: tequila, beer, smoke, and ammonia. He sits in the way he likes, at the far end of the bar, on the side so he can see the door, aware of who walks in, who comes toward him either too nonchalantly or too directly. The clatter, rumble, and whispers bloom up from full tables, filter over those that are empty, and linger amid the few dotted with solitary patrons.
    â€œAustinito el inventor
.
Buenas tardes,”
the bartender says. Austin taps his fingers on the bar. Its wooden surface nicked. The mirror above the bar like a strip of river. His eyes catch the ravaged reflection—a sudden recognition of self. He does not look good. He could have at least gotten the buttons on his shirt right. Has he really walked around all day, presented himself at the embassy with the shirt buttons all misaligned?
    â€œAustin, Austin,” the bartender says, grabbing his shoulder. And then to no one in particular, “the inventor who cannot invent his way out of Mexico.” He is holding a cloth in his hands. He begins to fold it into a small square.
    â€œ
Una tequila
,” Austin says.
    Austin remembers how he’d first come here, still new to the neighborhood. Everyone assumed he was working for the Soviets. Then, Miguel had whispered to him, with a smile, waving his finger at Austin, “One day, you will tell me what you did that you can’t get to your family.”
    â€œNothing,” Austin had said, and then, for emphasis,
“Nada.”
    And it was true. He had done nothing. In fact, what he had done was follow the rules, or, at least, followed them in the way he understood them at the time. It seemed to Austin that when he looked at his life thus far, examined each year, connecting one to the next, the years were marked by a keen obedience, not unlike the bottles that sat before him in their ordered rows, the overhead light painting first one and then another bright, white arc along each