Us Conductors by Sean Michaels Read Free Book Online

and gazed at a long shelf of batteries.

    SOMETIMES I AM LYING in my cot and I think: this place reminds me of the hold of a ship. And then of course I rub my eyes and remember I am indeed in the hold of a ship, and these groans are a ship’s steel groans, and my dreams are the dreams of a sailor. By standing on my pillow I can look out through my porthole, onto the water. The sea is endless. When the moon is out, it leaves a path of light across the waves.
    At mealtimes, a man appears at the door to my cabin. He isthe size of a polar bear, with the beard of a polar bear, the whiskers of a polar bear, a heavy white coat like that of a polar bear. His eyes are like a polar bear’s eyes. Were it not for his hands, five-fingered, wide as 78s, I might well mistake him for a polar bear. But he is a man. He was born in Murmansk. His name is Red, which must be a joke.
    My cabin door clangs open and Red is there, holding a tray of food. “Comrade?” he says, and I answer, amenably, “Hello, comrade.” With this formality out of the way, he asks, “How are you, Lev?” And I say, “I am good, Red.” He says, “Well, here is your feast.” The feast is usually potatoes and meat, but it is indeed a feast. The cook of the
Stary Bolshevik
is very fine: he does much with potatoes and meat and his rack of spices. Red claims that years ago, the cook worked in the kitchen of the Czar; and so of course now he is the chef for a groaning grey cargo ship; here he feeds the workers, and me—whatever I am.
    “Thank you!” I tell Red as I take the tray. He nods. “How goes the writing?” I tell him what I always do. I say: “It goes, it goes.” Sometimes I ask if I might peek in on my equipment across the corridor. Every time, Red seems to genuinely consider this. His eyes roll up and to the left and in some old instinct, he bares his teeth. Then he inevitably answers, “I am sorry, no.” And I smile, and he smiles.
    “My regards to the captain,” I say. Red nods his polar bear nod and gives me a thumbs-up. He picks up my dirty dishes with one giant dinner-plate hand. He turns and then looks back over his shoulder, as if to check whether I am following him. I am never following him; I am at my desk with my feast.
    Red leaves and the door swings shut behind him. There is a simple pause, like the one in Chopin’s op. 28, no. 7, a pause like the passing of autumn into winter, a pause like other pauses I have known, before Red locks the door.

    JOSEPH SCHILLINGER WALKED INTO the studio on a cool afternoon. I didn’t hear him knock, didn’t let him in. I was soldering. The blinds were drawn. I looked up and a small man was in the doorway, my desk lamp’s glare reflected in his glasses. He had a slick of polished black hair and a brown bow tie. He stood as still and straight as a post.
    I put down my soldering iron. “Yes?” I asked.
    “Dr Theremin,” he said. He smiled.
    “Are you selling something?”
    He rolled his eyes. “We met at the conservatory.”
    “Which conservatory?”
    “The conservatory of music.”
    “Which conservatory of music?”
    We were speaking in English. In Russian, he said: “The Conservatory of Music at the State University of Petrograd.”
    I turned the rod at the window and light broke through the blinds. It fell across Schillinger in a series of orderly bars. He wore an immaculate grey suit and fine, polished shoes. I did not remember him. He had something in each hand, palm up. “What are you holding?” I asked.
    “They are for you,” he said, and extended the gifts. In one hand, a tin wind-up frog. In the other, what looked like a dirty white billiard ball. He gave me the frog. “Try it,” he said. I looked from the toy to him and back to the toy. I twisted the shiny crank and felt the springs inside tightening. I put the frog on the workbench and let go.
    I expected it to jump across the table. It did not. For a long moment, as we listened to the mechanism coil, it did nothing at all.