Exiles (7 page)

“And what?”

It was Melissa. “Hey, sit down with us,” Spiegel said. It was the first time he had run into her in the classroom building. Classes were scheduled so that only one group used the small canteen at a time. A two-week veteran, Melissa was in a higher learning group, already conversing about the postal service and the weather, advanced stuff.

Spiegel hadn’t seen Melissa much all week at Flogsta. Because of her rehearsals, she was rarely home in the evenings. But Spiegel also noticed that they didn’t go out of their way to seek each other’s company. It almost seemed as if they were making a conscious effort to avoid each other, to keep at a slight remove. No doubt Spiegel was attracted to her, or could be if he would let himself, but there was something dangerous, devouring about her that put him on his guard. She must have felt that there was something slightly off-putting about him, too. Perhaps she still suspected that he was a deserter who was not owning up to his reasons for coming to Uppsala. Or perhaps she felt that an attraction to Spiegel would constitute a kind of transgression, almost like an incest violation— for as two Americans in the same dorm complex, weren’t they in fact almost like siblings in a nuclear family extempore? It would be better if, having resisted the first impulse of sexual attraction, they could regard each other from a distance, like friendly if slightly suspicious allies who had not so long ago been antagonists in a war.

“Welcome to Swedish for Invaders,” Melissa said to Spiegel. “I thought maybe you weren’t going to sign up.”

“Invaders?” Luis said.

“It’s her little pun on
invandrare
,” Spiegel explained. “Immigrants.”

“I think it means in-wanderers. People who wandered in,” Luis said.

“How do you like the class,” Melissa asked Spiegel.

“
Det går bra,
” he said. “
Bara bra.
”

“Yeah, that’s a good phrase. You’d be surprised how much conversation that will carry you through.”

“Sure, that and
vackra svenska flicka,
” Spiegel said.

“Pretty Swedish girl,” Luis intoned.

“How are things going for you,” Spiegel asked Melissa. “Cracking the whip?”

“The whip?” Luis said.

“Don’t I wish. So far, all I’m doing is dancing with the peasants. We do a chorus while Julie and Jean go into his chambers for a tryst.”

“I’m sure you’ll get a chance to—what was the phrase? Bathe your feet in his broken breast?”

“I’ve got to do something to get the director to notice me,” she said.

“Like learn Swedish?”

“That doesn’t matter. He’s Australian.”

“Well, I wouldn’t worry about it. He’ll notice you. You just have to make the most of your opportunities, right?”

“Absolutely. Look, I’ve got to run, as per usual. Catch you later?”

And she was off. Spiegel couldn’t help but admire her, as she left: her shape, her bearing, the way she seemed to pass through the room in one fluid motion, like a leaf borne downstream on a swift current. Heads turned to look at her. Spiegel was flattered, and a little self-conscious, to have been singled out by Melissa, the object of her attention and her solicitude. Luis finished his rye toast in silence, his face still warmed by the glow from her presence.

It was almost time to head upstairs for the afternoon class. Spiegel was about to turn to Jorge to see if he had finished his coffee when he was startled by a low moan, a whimper.

“You okay?” Spiegel said. Jorge looked to be in great pain. He held his hand to his gut, and leaned over the table. His face looked pinched, and a little flushed. He bit his lower lip until the skin turned white, as he uttered a soft, almost canine lament.

“Oo, oo,” he said.

“Jorge, man, what is it?”

“
Que tienes?
” said Luis.

“You all right?”

“That bird,” Jorge said. “That bird.”

“Melissa?”

“The one with the whips!”

“It’s for a play she’s in.”

“You had not told me that you knew that bird,” Jorge said. “The one who will dance with the peasants.”

“I’m sorry, I—”

“If I could only—have that bird,” he said. “I’d just, I’d just fuck her and fuck her and I’d never leave, I’d be with her every second, and if any other man tried to touch her I would—” He made a grand swipe with the edge of his hand to indicate: I would cut him to pieces.

“Aah, I thought you were sick,” Spiegel said. “I was gonna call the hospital.”

“
Sjukhuset
,” said Luis, proudly.

“I was sick. I am sick. That you didn’t introduce me to this bird.”

“I didn’t think—”

“You know America must be the greatest country in the whole fucking world,” Jorge said. “You have birds like this, how do you say it, groping on trees?”

“Growing on trees,” Spiegel said. “No, she’s pretty special. But she’s not just from America. She’s from California.”

“Oh,” Luis said. “She’s here on the California program. Now I understand.”

“Understand what?” Spiegel said. “She’s a junior at UCLA.”

“Well, you know what I hear they call it:
UCIA.
They send people here for spies.”

Spiegel heard one of the Estonians at a nearby table cough softly and set down his coffee cup. He knows more English than
he’s
let on, Spiegel noted.

“To spy on what?”

“All you guys.”

“Other Americans? No, I don’t believe that,” Spiegel said.

“What I hear,” said Luis, “is some of the Californians are very, very good, you know, reporters. You should read the papers they send back home to their professors.”

“Melissa doesn’t know shit about the Americans here,” Spiegel said. “I think I’m the only one she’s met.”

“They’re not just interested in Americans,” Luis said. “They’re also interested in—people like me. Your Latin brothers. And others who could be planning to export the
revolucion
.”

“How do you know this, Luis?”

But Luis didn’t answer, just raised an eyebrow as if to say: You’ll see.

“I don’t know, but if American birds are like that one I would never leave that country.”

“There is, you know, the matter of the war,” Spiegel said.

“I’d fight it for sure. To be near her.”

“But you see, she’s here.”

“Yes, that’s true.” Jorge finished his coffee. It was time to head back to class.

The Polish agronomist was flirting with the Biafran nanny, no language barrier there. The two Kurds were huddled by the radiator, speaking in muffled tones, their eyes scanning the room as if at any moment they expected an invasion of Turks. Karin was fiddling with a film projector. Occasionally, the class branched off into multimedia to learn such things as the rules of the road or the Swedish currency system. She couldn’t get the film to stay in the sprockets, and the light from the projector accentuated the harsh angles of her profile. Spiegel thought of the tricks he used to play, as a kid in camp, with a flashlight, around the fire, casting his face as a Frankenstein mask. He doubted anyone in the room could have had a similar experience. What kind of camp would they have known? A military outpost, no doubt, a training ground where they would have learned to march in formation, to carry arms, to fight for—for what? National independence, probably. Ethnic autonomy. Something no American has had to think about, much less fight for, in two centuries. No wonder they hate us so, he thought. No wonder we’re always blundering into wars on the wrong side.

At last, the film clicked into place and the sprockets whirred. Karin stepped over and pressed the toggle to dim the lights. The sound system clicked and sputtered, there was a tinny sound of distant symphonic chords, and a voice began to speak in absurdly clear Swedish, schoolroom enunciations, phrases such as, Spiegel had come to realize, one never actually hears on the street.

Det här är svenska . . .

But on the screen was just a big square of light—no image.

Jorge tapped Spiegel on the shoulder and whispered, in the forbidden tongue: “A film for blinds.”

They rode the bus home together after class. It was late afternoon, but already pitch-dark, even though the winter had passed its midpoint and the days were supposedly getting longer. The streets and sidewalks, Spiegel noticed, were kept clear of snow. Every shopkeeper and homeowner took on the responsibility of shoveling the snow away from his own doorway and whisking clean the nearby walkways and steps. But because the temperature rarely broke freezing all winter, the snow accumulated at the street corners in huge walls and drifts, which gave the city a mazelike quality. Often the only perspective was straight ahead, as if you were driving down a long icy chute, and Spiegel felt that the intersections would be really treacherous were it not for the extreme caution with which most Swedes seemed to navigate their way through the narrow passages of the Old City.

As the bus pulled out of town, crossed the river, nearly white with ice, and began the slow climb past the fallow fields out to the perimeter of settlement, Spiegel realized that the landscape, so strange and alien to him just a week before, had begun to take on a tinge of familiarity. He might have enjoyed the ride home except that Jorge had been bugging him, since class broke, for information about Melissa.

“Why are you so interested,” Spiegel asked Jorge. “You’ve already got an old lady.”

“A what?”

“It means . . . a girlfriend. But more than that. A serious girlfriend. A chick.”

“You Americans,” Jorge said, with mock exasperation. He looked out the window, examining his reflection in the glass. He gave his hair a slight pat of adjustment. “You don’t understand.”

“What’s to understand? This great lady takes you, a penniless refugee, into her heart . . . ”

“And into her flat.”

“That, too. And you’re looking to cheat on her. For what?”

“Every man, you see, needs two things. A wife and a mistress.”

“You’ve got neither.”

“Well, maybe it’s different in your country.”

“She is from my country, Jorge.”

“But I’m not, and this isn’t.”

That was true enough. “Okay, you come by my room. We’ll go up like I’ve got to lend you a language book or something, and she’ll probably be there, in the kitchen, and I’ll introduce you. Okay?”

“Super.”

“And then we leave. We don’t make a big thing of this tonight. See what you think after you meet her, and see what she thinks.”

“Whoa, Lenny. What is this interest you show? Maybe I am invading on your territory.”

“No, we’re just friends. Not even friends, really.”

“Then why do you protect her like a father? Is that an American thing, too? The big country protects the small country?”

“Aw, knock it off.”

“What? I don’t understand.”

“You understand. You get my drift.”

“Get my drift.” Jorge spoke the words slowly, as if to test them out. “I like that.”

Melissa was indeed in the kitchen, stirring some sort of rice curry in a big enameled iron pot. Jorge sat right down at the dining table. Spiegel, however, was distracted, for he had received a letter. And, to his surprise, it wasn’t from America. It had a local postmark.

The letter was from Tracy, a simple, hand-scrawled note—
Sorry we haven’t been to see you. Meeting tomorrow at 3. Be
there?—
and the address of the American Resisters Movement— Sweden. Spiegel would have to leave class early, but he would risk missing the valuable lesson on supermarkets.

Jorge squirmed in his seat, kicking against the table leg, trying to get Spiegel’s attention, until at last his impatience got the best of him. When Melissa turned from the stove, he spoke.

“My friend does not introduce us, but my name is Jorge Ramos.”

“Gee, I’m sorry,” Spiegel said. “This is Melissa.”

“Thanks, I can do it myself,” she said. “Melissa Layne. I’ve seen you at the school.”

“Yes, I’m just starting. For the third time.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I keep dropping out. I miss one lesson or two, and then when I get back to class, I’ve forgotten everything, and so I quit. And then start over again.”

“You’ll get screwed when you try to get credits,” Melissa asked.

“I only take the class because of my residency permit. So long as I can be in class, I do not have to apply for a permit to work. And that is enough to make me want to stay in the class forever.”

“Oh, I guess you’re not here on an exchange,” Melissa said.

“Sorry?”

“Exchange student. You know, from a college?”

“I never went to college. I was in business,” Jorge said.

“That’s
so
interesting.”

“Yes, I will tell you sometime about my business.”

“Jorge was the leading leather exporter in Europe,” Spiegel said.

“Leather, ugh,” Melissa said. “I like animals, so I use vinyl.”

Except for the whips, Spiegel thought.

“Well, I wouldn’t say leather,” Jorge said. “I would say clothing. Flight jackets and so on.”

“Oh, I hate that, too!”

“Well, what kind of clothes do you like?”

“You know, like this.” She ran her hands along her soft, cotton khakis. “Natural stuff. Silk. Chinos.”

“It was not the style where I came from, but maybe if it was big in California . . . ”

“I don’t know that it was big. What do kids wear back east these days, Lenny?”

“Don’t look to me for fashion bulletins,” Spiegel said. “I used to wear a bomber jacket, though. I thought of it as an ironic statement.”

“I don’t understand,” Jorge said.

“Irony?”

“Yes.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not his native language, Melissa.”

“No, really? I thought you were, like, English.”

The guys laughed at that, and Melissa joined in, a little uncomfortably.

“I will take that as a great compliment. I love the English,” Jorge said. “But my mother language is Portuguese. I am a native of Lisbon.”

“Cool. You speak so well.”

“You should hear me speak Portuguese.”

“I wouldn’t understand a word,” she said.

“Then I would sing to you in Portuguese. Everyone understands the language of music. And of food. And of love . . . ”