The Lacuna

It seemed impossible that this singular man, Hitler, could pull the whole world into the cauldron of his ambitions. Now it’s only a question of the order in which nations are pulled. And what unexpected arrangements, as nations find themselves shoulder to shoulder with others, or face to face against: Canadians on the soil of France, Germans in Poland, Russians and Finns on the shores of the Baltic Sea. Even in the horror of war, Lev is optimistic; he says it will make internationalists of us all. A modernized proletariat will unite, because war so conspicuously benefits rich men and kills the poor ones.

“Surely the French munitions worker can see how his labors fill the pockets of war financiers in the city of London.” He says the factory worker and peasant of every nation will discover that their common enemy is the factory owner, exploiting their labor, keeping them poor and powerless.

But this boy in a French or British factory, standing in his leather overall welding the casing on a metal bomb: what can he see? That thing will fly through the air, fall hundreds of miles away, and kill boys in leather overalls in a German factory. The reports will roar victory or defeat, and boys will never know how alike their lives have been.

Seva has arrived from Paris, to put his arms around his grandparents for the first time in his memory. He calls Lev “Monsieur Grandfather,” it breaks Natalya’s heart. The Rosmers, who brought him, are their oldest friends: Alfred the cartoon Frenchman with his long neck, moustache, and beret, and round Marguerite, clasping everyone to her bosom. Lev says he and Alfred have fought Stalin together since Prinkipo. The Rosmers will stay some months now in Mexico, they are renting a house. France is uncertain, to say the least, and the boy needs time to adjust. He’s lived with the Rosmers most of the time since Zinaida died, after Marguerite located him in a religious orphanage. Lev never talks about any of that. Zinaida was his eldest, the story unfolds a little at a time: tuberculosis, leaving the USSR with her baby for treatment in Berlin. Her visa revoked by Stalin, the husband Platon disappearing in a prison camp.

Seva is now thirteen, a tall schoolboy in short pants and leather sandals. He speaks Russian and French and not a word of Spanish, and walks carefully around the courtyard watching the hummingbirds that hover at the red flowers. Marguerite wanted to know what they are called. In France, she said, they don’t have such things. It must be true, because Seva dashed in red-faced with excitement over the creature. Marguerite made him slow down so she could translate his desires. A net or a pillowcase, he wanted. Anything in which he could capture it.

Natalya hugged him hard, already torn with remorse over the forces that govern this family. “No, Seva, you won’t be allowed to capture it,” she said. “Your grandfather believes in freedom.”

On Your Leaving

Praise the Vanguard, because it says your name. Van evanescent, servant of the advance, praise any word that could hold you. Praise your jacket that hangs on the peg, still holding one shoulder aloft, slow to forget the comrade it embraced.

Praise all but the vanishing point where we stand now, not quite parted. Already memories fall like blows. But soon they will be treasure, dropped like gold through a miser’s fingers as he makes his accounts: the years at a desk, elbow to your elbow. The Flemish lilt of your words, like the shift and drop of a typewriter carriage, every sentence luminous and careful: a library with poppy fields inside. The times our teacups crossed by accident, the shock of tasting your licorice there. The brotherhood of small rooms in locked-up houses, the drift of quiet words while waiting for sleep, a restlessness we cast over blended boyhoods: the captured fish in a glass, the spaniel that ran away in a Paris park. You were always first to escape. The sight of you, falling like rain into your own beatific slumber.

Praise each insomniac hour, kept wide awake by your glow. Sleep would only have robbed more coins from this vandal hoarded store.

—HWS, OCTOBER 1939

Folded into an envelope, it was another letter left lying in the office for someone to see, this time not an accident. With Van’s name typed on the outside, and then for good measure the address also, it looked like one of the endless messages delivered in the courier’s bag. A memorandum to be filed. A cowardly disguise, yes, but who in this world who ever wrote a love poem wants to stand by blushing while the lover reads it? Such things should be tucked in a coat pocket and read in a different room, or somewhere else altogether. He and Bunny leave tonight on the evening train.

His valises were all packed and his mind too; he seemed halfway in New York when he came into the office looking for his black shoes. He took the jacket off the peg by the door, one last time, and put it on as he always does, shifting it across his shoulders to get it settled. The shoes were located, absurdly, on top of the file cabinet. Probably set there by Natalya when she swept.

“Well, comrade Shepherd. We have had a go at the world together in this little headquarters, have we not?”

“We have. It has been very great, Van. You taught me worlds of things. It’s hard to say how much.”

He shrugged. Glanced at the envelope on the corner of the desk. “More filing, on a Sunday?”

“I think it’s old, maybe from Friday.”

“But it’s for me, you’re sure? Not for the commandant?”

“It’s your name on it. Probably just a news clip or something. It couldn’t be very important.”

He smiled and shook his head, sliding his eyes toward the dining room where Lev plowed his way through the daily quotient of newspapers. “Long live the Revolution and work that never ends. But mine here is done.”

He dropped the envelope in the wastepaper basket.

The rains have ended. Soon the migrant birds will come back from the north.

The Trotskyist Party in the United States continues to send migrants too, a small, steady flow of young men eager to work for Lev. They are good boys with plenty of heart and muscle, put to work mostly as rooftop guards and kitchen help. Socialist Workers, they call their party, and most are from what they call the “Downtown Branch” in New York. Jake and Charlie were first to arrive, with a fat, smuggled envelope of cash, support from the worldwide movement that is well put to use in this household. As was the bottle of brandy they produced in time for Van’s wedding.

The newest one is Harold, who “bunks” with Jake and Charlie, speaking their same language of conk and dig me and togged to the bricks. Mother would have adored these boys, though she’d probably lose patience with their praise for the common man.