The Invention of Exile

by Vanessa Manko

Genres: Literary Fiction

Synopsis

"Connecticut, 1913. Wrongly accused of attending anarchist gatherings Austin Voronkov, engineer, an inventor and Russian immigrant is deported with his young family. While his wife and children are eventually able to return, Austin becomes indefinitely st"

Release date: August 14, 2014

Publisher: Penguin Books

Print pages: 304

Sample

***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected proof***

Copyright © 2014 Vanessa Manko

CONNECTICUT
1913 – 1920

He arrived in the United States in 1913 on a boat named Trieste. His face open, the brow smooth, eyes with the at once earnest, at once insecure gaze of hopeful, wanting youth. He began work fast. First at the Remington Arms Company, making ammunition for the Russian Imperial Army, rising up the ranks to become an inspector of the Mosin-Nagant rif le and later working for the Hitchcock Gas Engine Company. In Bridgeport, Connecticut. His early mornings spent among the others. The hordes of men shuttling to and from factories in lines and masses of gray or black through the dim light of winter mornings and in the spring when the morning sun was like a secret, coy and sparkling, the water f lashing on the sound.

They found each other though. Through all of that, they, the Russians, found each other. They learned to spot each other through mannerisms, glances. This was later. In 1919. Then, the restrictions came at work and in the boardinghouse.

“English! You must speak English! That, or go back home,” the foreman always said.

The warehouses loomed up around the men like capes. Their windowpanes caked with dirt, small rectangles of frosted, beveled glass. Sometimes, the broken panes were replaced by colored lozenges—sea green, slate blue, dark ruby red. Austin liked to connect them, making up constellations, innumerable designs and geometries.

“English!” The foreman’s voice would resound off the tin walls, echoing off the glass, the workers all seated in rows solemn and silent, some standing. once he made the mistake of speaking Russian to a worker.

“Bolshevik! Go back to Russia and bring your revolution with you!” the foreman yelled.

In those early years he sometimes spoke Russian in his sleep and woke in a sweat, the others around him, snoring or stirring as he peeled back his covers to step out of bed, springs creaking.

“The bastard is up again.”

“Hey, Polak—can’t you sleep like a normal person?” The inaccu-acy, or the intent, of the slander—he was not sure which had been the more injurious. Cautiously, he’d slip out of the room and with overcoat on, make his way through the narrow hallways and down to the first floor, feeling for the latch underneath the stairs—its wrought iron handle cool and coarse. He’d made a deal with the proprietor. For one more dollar a month he agreed to keep Austin’s books safe—notebooks mostly. The owner wouldn’t touch them, he’d promised. And in the milky white of those winter mornings, Austin would sit at the large kitchen table working. His drafting paper spread across the table. A compass. A slide rule. Then he was obsessed with the scientist Faraday, examining his notebooks, reading his reports on electromagnetic wave theory for radio. He was fascinated with Maxwell’s question: What is light? He’d read Maxwell’s Matter and Motion, Theory of Heat.

. . .

Near the Remington Arms , mostly, and sometimes too along the streets leading to the Hitchcock Gas Company, men lay in wait to descend upon the workers, thrusting flyers, notices, newspapers into reluctant hands, running alongside them, sometimes for up to two blocks. They were a nuisance, but Austin never refused. He took what was presented and stuffed these pamphlets and papers into the deep pockets of his overcoat. At the end of a week’s time, his pockets had no room for his gloves. on Sunday mornings, early, he removed each piece of paper, unfolding, smoothing out the crumpled notices. He read them, some in Russian, others in broken English. Lecture on the History of Russian Folk; Advance in Soviet Machines; Russian Choral Recital; Speak, Read, Write: English; History of Man. Other postings and announcements filled the boardinghouse’s entrance hallway. Newsprint paper tacked to the walls in a confusing jumble resembling papier-mâché. Someone had secured a row of nails for such flyers and the papers hung off the walls folded inward as if fatigued, corners rustling when the door opened to a February, March, or June gust, causing the inevitable swirl of errant flyers. There were papers on the floor, strewn along the stairs, curled and shivering in the doorway, some escaping out to the street and away. other flyers hung from strings draped off nails, dangling mobile-like and beckoning with more elegance than their unlucky pinioned neighbors.

It was Austin’s habit that, when not in his shared boarding room, he scoured these walls, reading the advertisements and notices, choosing what he’d wanted, writing things down in his notebook. “Professor,” some chided as they passed him entering or leaving. “Bourgeois.” He didn’t listen.

The flyers and notices promised a way to “pass a pleasant evening.” The Russian Social Club, the Union of Russian Workers—it was a place to go, a way to avoid the boardinghouse where there was only room to eat and sleep. The Russian Social Club met in the basement of the Orthodox church. They held music recitals. He could belong to the chorus. They put on plays and pageant shows, organized sales and celebrated Pushkin’s name day. The union offered English classes, courses on the automobile, radio engineering. He paid his dues. He attended sponsored lectures. He received the union’s paper.




It was a brick building where bread used to be made. The ovens were now stacked with books and manuals and the pupils, all union members, sat along the old assembly-line conveyors that lay in parallel, crossing the room in broad silver bands. There was no heat in the building, just cold running water, so they sat in coats and hats. In other rooms, meetings about the state of Russia took place; these were often loud, one man’s voice distinct over others’ murmurings or grumblings. leaving his English class, Austin stood in the open door, watching the meeting in the adjacent room, listening, “workers,” “society,” “capitalists.”

“Don’t just stand there,” a man ordered. “Come in.”

“What’s this all about?”

“For workers.”

“I’m not a worker.”

“Let me see your hands.” The man looks at Austin’s upturned palms. “You’re a worker.”

“I’m an engineer.”

“So? That means you work, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Then listen.”

He walked in, stood next to the man. The room was filled, men seated, others standing three deep along the walls. They’d turned the lights out as if for a theater performance. one man stood before the gathering, candle in hand, reciting tenets from a broadsheet.

“Why are the lights off?” Austin asked.

“No one outside can see in.”

“And if they did?”

“Trouble,” the man grumbled and disappeared farther into the room, lost.

. . .

To enter a house of women is to enter a home. He’d been in the country six years before reaching the moment when he could move from the men’s rooming house to a home—a proper home, as a boarder, but still a home. Gone from those dank, stark boardinghouse hallways. Eight men to a room. Walls of cracked plaster. White chalky bits crumbling. A fine residue of white covered the splintered wood floors, gray and stripped bare, a fog of white along the windowpanes.




Seven dollars a month. For that he’d receive meals; the girls, two sisters, would do his laundry, mend his clothes, and, if needed, buy him things during their weekly shopping—paper, pencils, tooth powder, chocolate bars. Every Monday, he’d have to write out what he needed in a green ledger book that sat on a diminutive table against the stairs. Why he couldn’t ask for things outright, he never did understand except that perhaps the mother didn’t want him to get too close to her daughters. That, and they kept a careful account of his purchases.




It was a kitchen of white, save for the large table in the center of the room whose checkered red tablecloth provided the room’s only color. Two large windows at the back of the house filled the room with a gauzy white light. outside, a f lock of sparrows alighted from the small rectangular yard, fluttered and traced an arc of black across a window frame like a stroke of calligraphy. One girl stood at the stove in profile to Austin, the other reached for plates from a cabinet—high enough so that her foot came off the ground a little in the reaching. She set one plate atop another, the rattle of them sweet and delicate. He watched her—careful and deliberate with each, a significance in the placing as if the gold rims aligning the white plates held a power within the circle. He knew her hands first, the gesture of them—quiet and sure. Hands that matched her peaceful face, her calm and contained kind of beauty. She had a line of flour across her forehead. He imagined that if someone had told her she would’ve wiped it off without a thought, with no concern for her tired, spent appearance, the loose tendrils and wisps of hair framing her face. A graveness within. Quietude in her gray eyes that he, without knowing why, wanted to upset, disrupt, and cause to f lash. She reminded him of something silver—regal silver with a kind of inner poise as if she had—did have—a deep complicity with herself, had figured something out and was reluctant to part with the insight.

This was Julia.

Julia, setting out plates as thin as coins. January 12, 1919. Nearly a year later they were married.

. . .

His presence had altered the household, that Connecticut household of winter. There are scents a man brings: the dirt, the metallic, alkaline of tools, bleach of white undershirts. The pungency of sweat, the mildew of ponderous shoes. Smoke and shaving soap. It was never discussed though Austin could intuit that there had been a change. The father had died five years prior, leaving his widow and the two daughters with nothing but expenses, working as a necessity and a room to let, if needed. And now the outward signs of an alteration were visible—a household of three women once again included a man. But there was also a latent shift in tone. An anxiety assuaged. His presence allowed it to dissipate like a hand reaching out to balance an unsteady table. For them, he meant security, protection, a release from worry, almost.

He was not a man of material needs. His requests were minimal. Tooth powder and shaving cream. Rolling papers and drafting paper. That is all. He stood, in profile, hunched over a small hallway table, three-legged, its half-mooned surface f lush against the wall. The ledger is splayed open. A pencil within its spine.

His first list amid the commotion of morning. The constant creak of the floorboards as the sisters move from bedroom to hallways, through doorways, up and down stairs. one unrelenting f low of productivity. He’d wanted to write the list in private. He didn’t want anyone to see him struggle with the words. The simplest things could bring one back to the outsider’s humility—the language mostly. Had he used the right word? Was it tooth or mouth powder? He seemed to live his days then trying to decipher codes known only to others. And not simply words, but facial expressions, behaviors. He didn’t know it then, but it would become a habit of his life, his way of being. But it was better to have to write out his list in the ledger than endure the humiliation of speech.

He’d held the pencil in his hand that first day, looked to his right, then left, and bent to write, the door’s transom offering the same, and only, pale morning light. The pencil tip broke. Unusual for him, he who was so precise with any instruments for drawing, but in his nervousness, he’d pressed too hard. He used his thumbnail to peel back some of the wood, a splinter wedged beneath the nail bed. An arc of red. Wincing, he brought his thumb to his mouth and then began again. The pencil, now jagged edged, tore the tissued ledger paper.

“You understand how it works?” she’d asked. From above he heard a step on the stairs. Julia leaned over the banister. A patient smile formed, shy, her gaze pulled back slightly. “I handle this. It’s my responsibility— the ledger book, the shopping.” She hesitated before fully descending the stairs.

“I was writing some things down,” Austin said, his hand f lipping through the ledger pages.

“I do my best to get exactly what you need, but if the store is out I get the next best thing.”

“My spelling is sometimes not so good.”

“I leave your bag right under the table here,” she said. “It’s all sorted from what we buy for the household. I put it just right here.” She pressed her fingertips to the tabletop.

Soon, they had an agreement, a routine—he and Julia. Favors create a bond.

“If you get me some sugar for my tea, I’ll get you a pair of shoes,” he told her, still unsure how exactly he’d approach the man from work who patched together makeshift shoes out of collected leather scraps. It was April, the thaw begun in earnest. The days were getting longer. After dinner Julia made tea. The others, Austin included, sat in the dining room with the windows blue, turning to black. At that hour the city hushed, and it was easier to hear the trolley cars in the far distance, creeping and creaking along the streets, and far beyond that the mournful bellow of the ferryboats as they moved in broad arcs along the sound.

“Really. New shoes. It will be just between us,” he told her.

They had a system. During the pouring and passing of tea, they would find reason to be close, she pressing the stolen sugar into his hand, which he’d then curl into his fist before dropping it into his teacup. It was their secret. A minor transgression, but in a house with no privacy a “just between us” moment was something to be treasured. later, Julia told him that she was surprised by what a man could make one do.




When May and June of that first year came, they rushed from work to meet in the park. Beardsley Park. Austin waited for Julia, he always the earlier of the two because she had the longer way to walk. He paced and when he recognized her gait—fast while on the sidewalk, slowing as she stepped into the greenness expanding overnight—he took off his hat. She had once told him she liked to see his full face as she approached, stepping up to him as he extended his hand. They followed the park’s outer perimeter, always moving in the opposite direction of others. Austin wanted to see people as they came toward him. He was not at ease with the idea of someone at his back. As they strolled, sometimes holding hands, sometimes not, he would describe ideas for inventions, his voice growing low and halting just in case he could be overheard. Julia had to step closer to him then, straining to hear, which made him turn his head and lean down to her slightly, their shoes nearly scuffing, shoulders touching.

He had other ideas too. A house. In time. The implication was that it would be for them and she nodded, just barely—a dip of chin and then she smiled, a quiet delight that she seemed to savor within because she was shy at the prospect of a house; it meant other things that they had not spoken of yet. He liked to lead her to a bench halfway around the park. They held hands then, she kneading his palm like a worry stone.




A heavy thunderstorm. In early July. Austin was delayed at the factory. The force of sudden rain flooded a section of the warehouse basement and the men stayed on, trying to keep the water from damaging the machinery. In their minds, water in the gears, moss in crevices, mold within wires, and wetness causing corrosion meant days with no work and no work meant no pay. They divided into groups of five, passing buckets of water down six different lines that ran from the interior of the basement to the nearest window or door. Austin sloshed through inches of the rising water, his boots then socks absorbing the wet until he felt the chill on the soles of his feet and then the hunger too, his whole being aching for hot food. He was eager to be home, in dry warmth, but disappointment tugged at him too, sad that he wouldn’t be meeting Julia for their time alone in the park, knowing that, in this weather, she’d certainly go straight home. When he was free to leave the factory, he didn’t stay with his fellow workers who wanted to wait out the rain in the neighboring bar. Instead, he walked with shoulders curved forward, crouching away from the rain. When he entered the house, he was grateful for a moment of stillness and to have the sound of the downpour dulled as he stood in the front vestibule.

Julia was not there. Her mother sat alone under the grim kitchen light, twisting a napkin into a coil. The sister was out looking for Julia, who had not returned, the mother said expressionless, which had an anger of its own. He left at once and ran to the park, where he found her before their bench, umbrella in hand, though it hadn’t done much good because she was soaked. The rain had tapered off just enough so that the blossoms of the linden trees could give off their soap and honey scent, the ivory yellow blooms fierce and fresh against the wet leaves. He embraced her. She was shaking. He drew his arms around her. It was the first time he’d touched her so fully and she gasped.

“You need to get warm,” he said. “Come closer, I’m warm here.” He could feel her chill through her clothes, along her neck and wrists. Her cheeks were both feverish and damp and he brought his own cheek to hers.

“I waited for you,” she said.

“I should’ve come here first,” he said by way of apology.

“What happened?” she murmured into his chest.

“Flood at work. We all stayed. Had to clear four inches of water out of the basement. I thought for sure you’d go home.”

“You went back to the house?”

“Yes. Come, we’ll go now.”

“Does Mother know?” She pulled away from him, her face slick and shining white for a moment in contrast to the drab wet gravel pathway, the rain-darkened wooden benches and the trees hanging low and weighted above her.

“No. I just turned around and left as soon as I knew you weren’t home.”

“She surely suspects by now. Did you tell her where you were going?”

“No.”

“I’ll go in first,” she said. “I’ll make up some excuse. You should come in later.”

“You’ll make me stay out in this? You’ll be sick as it is and then I’ll be next.”

“If we go back in around the same time she’ll guess.”

“Well, let her. We have to tell her at some point.”

“She’ll throw you out of the house, you know.”

“So?”

“I don’t want you to go.”

“But it’s not going to be like this forever. We’ll have to tell them. I’ve been saving. It’ll be soon.”

“You say all this, but you know I worry about how they’ll manage without me.”

“She can let another room, get another boarder.”

“But it’s not near the amount that I make at work.”

“They can’t be your concern forever, you know. You must have your own life.”




“ You and me. We will marry,” he had told Julia a full year after he’d moved in. It was his attempt at a kind of official proposal. Till then, it had been talk around the subject—that he was saving, what his plans were, how she might fit into that picture he was drawing out for her, with the whispers of a house. Now he’d made his intentions known.

“And how are you so sure?” she had asked, teasing and falling back from him for a moment. The park growing more crowded as the weather softened into full summer and passersby had to filter between them, turning their heads at the abrupt way Julia had stopped.

“It’s inevitable,” he said. “We will give each other an oath.”

“An oath?” She was enraged. She was thrilled.

“Yes.”

“What kind of oath?”

“An oath to live together, to be.”

“Marriage.”

“Yes. I will pass all my belongings to you. All my property.”

“You don’t own anything.” She stepped beside him then and they continued on.

“I own a typewriter.”

“And what am I going to do with that?”

“I have a farm. I will inherit a farm.”

“But that’s in Russia. What good will that do me here?”

“Will you take the oath with me or not?”

“How do we take the oath?”

“We just say it.”

“And then?”

For Austin, who still practiced the old customs and rituals, marriage meant kissing the icons, kneeling together, pressing lips to the Bible. Then you were husband and wife, it was merely an oath between a man and a woman. That was all. She’d agreed to it. It was a violet evening in August. The Russian Social Club’s summer dance was held in the cool basement of the stone church. She was in a lace frock, borrowed shoes with a fake rhinestone buckle; he in a navy suit and a white collarless shirt.

“A Cossack. You look like a Cossack,” friends from work and the club teased him.

The heavy light of August, the late afternoon light of summer’s last month, fell through the windows like ship portals. Some of the windows were stained glass so that here a circle of rose, there the blue of a star, the yellow of a leaf anointed the faces, the bodies moving.

“My cheeks hurt. From smiling,” she’d told him. They’d come separately. She with her sister and he with some of the men from work. When he spotted her, he watched her among the crowd and he could tell she was struggling to keep focused. She half listened, nodding as she searched the room for him. Each, though, was aware of the other’s movements— she through a handful of women gathered like a bouquet at the edge of the dance floor; he tracing the back wall to greet a just-entered friend, each smiling faintly when within each other’s gaze. “My wife, zhena,” Austin mouthed to her across the room. She blushed and turned her eyes away.

The day’s mist and light rain was like an effervescence. They were eager to move into the future days awaiting them like pristine windows strung in a long row.

. . .

January 2 , 1920. We all carry dates within us, flash cards, silver-plated, perhaps engraved. We carry them in us like the memory of those long dead, tucked like the pages of a book, dog-eared. January 2. This was Austin’s date. His days hinged here.

It started in rumors. Things one would hear. Nothing definite, just a sense to be watchful, aware and—to get rid of anything from Russia. Books. Newspapers. “They are taking Russians.” “They don’t do that here.” “Yes, but they are taking them.”

He ignored all the talk. The ones who were saying it were old. He thought they were simply prone to paranoia. But he started to hear things. Anarchy, socialism, communism, proletariat, revolt. To him, they had a clanking, rattle sound, like a chain-link fence in strong winds.

“Better throw out anything from the fatherland,” that was the advice. He removed all the Russian books from his shelves. He still had some of them—Science and Society, Aspects of Engineering.




“ They’ve rounded up other Russians.” Julia was wringing her hands. She is standing at the door as Austin walks in. The house is warm, but he brings in the cold, rubbing his hands, taking hers in his own.

“How did you hear?”

“I’ve heard them talking at work. They are holding some in Hartford, others in New York.”

“I know. I’m not involved in any of it.” He removed his hat, his coat.

“Please, do not spend these evenings out anymore. Come straight home.”

“Most of the things I go to are harmless—music, English courses, history.”

“It’s dangerous now.”

“Don’t worry yourself, Julia, my jewel. I’m not a worker. I’m more advanced. They don’t want men like me.”

“Please don’t go anymore,” she says, handing him the day’s late-edition paper. He reads the headline:

PLAN FOR RED TERROR HERE— Program of organized ‘Russian
Workers’ for Revolution Revealed —General Strike First Step—Then Armed

Revolt and Seizure of all Means of Production and Articles of Consumption Criminals to be Freed — Blowing up of Barracks, Shooting of Police, End of Religion, Parts of the Program.

He bristled, but hid it from Julia. He came home straight from work as she requested. They took walks after dinner, once, twice around the block and then back inside. He’d begun to look over his shoulder, stopped taking the newspapers from the men on corners. He didn’t stop going to the Russian Social Club though. Here, he sang in the choir, sometimes played the zither. And once or twice a treat of elderberry liquor or someone was traveling back to Russia and could send parcels, letters, postcards home. There would be no harm in going to such gatherings. He’d long ago ended his association with the Union of Russian Workers. He didn’t believe that workers and trained engineers were equal. He, with all his learning. He’d taken the courses and studied and he did not come to America to be considered equal to the mere worker, the mere assembly-men who had no design or drafting skills, no knowledge of how physics fit part to part. The workers did not know how to calibrate and compute, measure and cut to make the actual engine, gun, carburetor. Still, he read the article. The Americans were scared. He was scared. The whole country was in a panic. He practiced his English, tried to form words in his mouth without the trace of an accent. It didn’t work. He avoided speaking to strangers. He placed all his reading materials in an empty canvas bag, hiding it under the bed. Just in case.




The city in winter. 1920. A fog shrouded the warehouses and bridges, lending an ethereal quality to the night. It was opalescent almost. The mauve sky with a dark mass of clouds encroaching. It wasn’t the usual bitter, dry cold. It was damp; moisture on the air like there’d been a little bend in winter. A crack. It was snowing still. It was nice to taste the f lakes on his tongue.

Austin left the Hitchcock Company and made his way through the rows of factories that dotted the shoreline. He crossed the railroad tracks into the residential neighborhoods, with their white sidewalks and storefronts of frosted glass. Here and there he could see lights on in the apartment buildings.

He was late. He could make out the others—a blurred image through the foggy windows of the church basement, all seated around octagonal tables or leaning against walls. Austin’s eyes were on his step, the tip of his leather boot caught the light so that he could see the water droplets, the granules of slush forming like a string of beads. His footsteps were soft on the snow-covered cement stairs that led into the basement. The room was lit low, the green sconces lining the perimeter offered the only feeble light. The heat from the radiators and corner fire embraced him. There was dampness too. Mold mixed with tea leaves. A trace of incense, pine resin, and frankincense. Someone was speaking into a microphone.

“Kuchinsky, Marov, Matushko,” the secretary read off the names, “Michailoff, Nikitin, Petrenko, Romanovich, Saloff, Svezda, Vinogradov, Vorinin, Voronkov—”

They were a sorry bunch, the aliens (that’s what they’d been called) with their Russian language, all hard angles and swallowed vowels. He could see the others, their eyes sunken and gray, purple around the rims. Bruised. Some had gashes above the eye, on the brow, the bridge of the nose, blood turning black as it dried, rising over an eyebrow, along a jawline.

They were not the only ones, though he didn’t know it at the time,