Forty Leap (14 page)

“I have to…” I began.

“Forget it.” He waved a dismissive hand at
me. “It could never work.”

“I have to ask a favor,” I said.

Sitting down, his elation deflated, he looked
at me, waiting.

“There was a manifest that cleared
yesterday…a few people from the Bronx were on it, is that
right?”

Taken aback, he asked, “How did you know
about it?”

Just that it was true encouraged me. If Igor
could know about a manifest and from where its members came, he
might just be able to get a letter delivered to Jennie in the
United States proper.

“I was wondering if it were possible to get
someone transferred to the Bronx since they’ll be shorthanded.”

Now his mood was completely gone. I had
turned his celebration into mourning. “You wish to leave? How long
have you been thinking about this?”

“Not me,” I said. “Someone else.”

For the first time since I had presented my
list of people for him to look up, Samud stared at me with an
appraising glare. Unlike me, he was aware of the goings on of
people in a captive situation. There were always favors exchanged
for favors.

“Who is this friend?” he asked. “What is he
giving to you?”

“Is that important?”

“It is. This is no small favor. For him to
ask it and you to bring it forward, the return must be great.”

I said nothing for a moment, gauging how best
to answer his suspicions. I would have to tell him something and
there were no lies at my disposal. But I was spared having to tell
one because the truth came to him before I could speak.

“It is your friend Jennie, yes?”

I nodded dumbly.

He nodded back. “Then Igor Grundel has taken
advantage of my absence to rope you into one of his schemes.”

I cannot describe the terrible feeling that
overcame me at that moment. Without any explanation from me, Samud
had been able to figure out exactly what was going on.

“His price is usually not so high,” Samud
continued, drumming his fingers on the desk. “I suppose he saw an
opportunity in our friendship.”

“I didn’t know,” I stammered. “The
others…”

“They don’t know either. Come with me.”

He stood from his desk and waited for me to
follow suit. We left the office and took the stairs down one floor.
There was a ten foot by ten foot storage closet here, with shelves
lining the walls and boxes filling the shelves. Samud opened the
door with a key and, after a moment’s looking, pulled down a medium
sized brown box with a lid. The box was light when he handed it to
me and I set it down on the floor to inspect its contents. I was
unsurprised but no less devastated to discover it was filled with
the letters of my peers. They had been turning their letters in to
Igor for months and paying him whatever he asked for that false
hope. In turn, he had been turning the letters over to Samud, who
had stored them in a box.

“Did you read these?” Every single envelope
had been carefully opened with a letter opener.

He nodded.

I think there may have been tears in my eyes.
There were too many rusted sides to this coin. There was the lie
and the treachery from Igor and the invasion of privacy by
Samud.

“Whatever you think this is, Mathew,” Samud
told me. “It is still a place where the prisoners are the prisoners
and the guards are the guards. Igor Grundel is nothing more than a
profiteering mole.”

“Is he even a prisoner?” I asked.

Samud nodded. “He came to me within his first
few days and offered his services. I am curious now as to why he
seeks transfer and why he would need to get it through you when he
and I have regular contact.”

I shook my head. I had none of that
information. Samud put the lid back on the box and tried to lift
it, but I held it down.

“I’d like to return these letters to the
people who wrote them,” I said.

He smiled. “I’m sure that you would, but I
can’t allow it.”

“Why? Igor’s done working for you. He wants
out so you can’t trust him and, even if you did trust him, I’m not
going to keep this secret for you.” I paused, waiting for a
response, but he gave me none. His expression remained the same.
“You must have known that when you showed this to me.”

“I was hoping that our friendship…”

“
Friendship?
What kind of friendship
do we have? Remember, Samud, that this is still a place where the
prisoners are the prisoners and the guards are the guards.”

His posture became sad and he released the
box. “So it is.”

When I was back in my room, I was sorry that
I had ruined his day. Perhaps I had done him a favor by removing
the conflict. Now he could be completely overjoyed about his
promotion and his impending return to his homeland. I placed the
box of letters on my empty bookshelf and then took out the letter I
had written to Jennie. My rage and despair were so great that I
couldn’t do anything but stare blankly at the words for hours to
come. In the morning, I went to work without having slept.

The next work day seemed very long. When it
finally ended and we were bussed back to the apartment building, I
was exhausted. My anger had dissipated, replaced only by utter
despondency. I had no energy, no rush as I planned to reveal Igor’s
treachery to the group.

As the dinner plates were emptied and the
tables cleared, he came to see me. Obviously, he knew that Samud
had returned and he also knew that I had been to see him. The
miserly grin was back on his face so he clearly didn’t know what I
had in store for him.

“Did you speak with your friend?” he asked
me.

I nodded back at him, unable to look him in
the eye. We were standing up now, moving into the common rooms.

“And?”

“I’ll get you my letter,” I said and detached
myself from him.

We were allowed, before socialization, to go
to our rooms briefly in case there was something we wanted to get,
such as a book or a deck of cards. We were carefully monitored as
we went upstairs and carefully monitored as we came back down. When
I emerged from my room with the box of letters, the guard on duty
looked at me queerly. Because he did not speak English, he did not
give me any instructions before taking it from me and inspecting
its contents. Though he looked confused by what he found, he could
see no reason to deny it to me and so handed it back.

I returned to the common room straight faced
and without emotion. Some people noticed the oddity of me entering
with a box in my hands, but it was not until I stood up on one of
the tables that the room began to go quiet. I waited, saying
nothing, until everyone in the room had ceased his or her
conversation and focused his or her attention on me. Sparing one
glance at the stricken Igor, who seemed to know what I held in my
hands, I put the box on the table at my feet and took off the lid.
Reaching inside, I pulled out the first letter.

“Does anyone here know a Susan Wu?” I kept my
voice low, but it carried through the silence. People from other
rooms had moved into this one and I had the attention of all of the
workers in the building.

Tentatively, a hand went up.

“This is yours,” I said, holding it out to
the lady. She came forward and took it slowly from my hand. She
must have recognized her own handwriting on the letter immediately
because all sense of hesitation left her and she tore it out of the
envelope to scan its contents. In a moment, she had turned
viciously on Igor.

“This is the letter I gave you,” she screamed
at him. “I
paid
you to send this!”

He shrank away from her, no lie coming to his
defense. Before the scene could get any uglier, I reached into the
box and pulled out another letter.

“Barney Jefferson. Who wrote a letter to
Barney Jefferson?”

Jonah Jones came forward, his large face
looking much like a saddened child’s. But before he could send an
accusation Igor’s way, I pulled out the next letter.

“Martin Jones.”

“Paula Glock.”

“Shlomo Uris.”

“Daniel Tiri.”

Lydia came and took the letter without
looking at me. She then melted back into the crowd.

As I read more names and returned more of the
lies, the noise in the room grew. I had to shout to be heard.
Eventually, though, handing them out became easier because those
that had given letters to Igor found their way forward while those
that hadn’t left the room. Igor himself moved close to the guards
for protection. When the box was empty, I got down off of the table
and went to him.

“This is yours,” I said, handing him the box.
“Now it’s full of your promises.”

The next several days were not good for Igor
Grundel. His usual campaign through the common rooms had come to a
halt. No one would speak to him but everyone, even those who had
not had dealings with him, had terrible glares for him. There was
no free moment when there were not ten pairs of eyes on him.
Because he could not go to his room during socialization, he sat by
himself in a corner, close to one or more guards. He sat with his
eyes closed so that he did not have to face accusing eyes. Two days
after I had outed him, there was an accident at the work site in
which he was almost killed. The word
accident
may be
improperly used. After that Samud came to the site to investigate.
I saw him talking to Igor, the little man throwing words furiously
around and waving his arms in the air. In the end, though, Igor did
not get his transfer. His betrayal had ended in his being
betrayed.

For myself, the situation was largely
unchanged. My meetings with Dr. Miktoffin had stopped on a dime as
did my meetings with Samud. No one offered me gratitude or
friendship for what I had done. Though Igor was hated now and could
do no more harm, I had not elevated my status any by uncovering the
scandal. Everyone hates the messenger. But no one tried to kill me
and no one glared at me angrily. Somehow, I had dropped down on the
list of people Jonah liked to speak with, which wasn’t a bad thing.
So I went back to sitting alone and brooding over the picture of
Jennie and the letter I had written her.

As November wore on and the cold became
colder, work became harder and my misery burrowed deeper. The
dynamic in the common rooms returned to normal, less the inclusion
of Igor, who still kept to himself for safety. My mood had become a
consistent gloom. I awoke depressed, worked depressed, ate
depressed, and slept depressed. I began to dream of Jennie getting
onto that bus, her ghostly visage through the dirty window ripped
away from me. In almost every dream she was killed and I awoke with
a heart wrenching fear that would not dissolve. My hours of sleep
shrank until my eyes were sunken into my head. I did not eat
well.

I prayed for a long leap through time.

Then, on Thanksgiving, a day we were given
off out of respect for the country to which we had once belonged, I
had an epiphany.

The holiday was nothing but a normal day off,
something we had every Sunday anyway. We were kept in our rooms
except for mealtimes and socialization, which was the ninety
minutes following each mealtime. Throughout breakfast and breakfast
socialization I brooded. Throughout lunch and lunch socialization I
brooded. Between lunch socialization and dinner, however, I came to
a conclusion. I could no longer rely upon my ersatz power to save
me from myself. A long leap, I realized, would not take me any
closer to Jennie or to my family. In fact, it would take me further
away. It had been so long that I was suddenly sure that my days of
time tripping were over. If I wanted to get out of the United Arab
Nation occupied territory of the United States, I would need to do
it myself.

During dinner socialization, I stood in the
center of the room and looked around at all of the faces. They were
all the same. Everyone had conceded to the life given him or her by
the UAN. Though they considered this portion of their lives a bit
of purgatory, they had accepted it. We could hardly think of
ourselves as prisoners when we were well fed and well housed. The
cage was gilded well. There was no burning desire for the captivity
to end. These people had been completely beaten down by the lack of
hardship. No one absolutely hated being there enough to want to get
out. No one, that is, except me.

I found Carlos Castillo sitting at a table
with Doreen Lander and Jesse Cataldo. The conversation came to an
abrupt end when I appeared between them and all eyes fell upon
me.

“What do you want?” Carlos asked.

“Are you ever going to do it?” I asked.

“Do what?”

“Escape.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m going to do it,” I said to him. “With or
without you.”

His jaw was clenched as he struggled to find
a response.

“Stuff it!” Jesse yelled at me, but I ignored
her.

The thing of it was that I really had no idea
how to perform an escape. I wasn’t even sure how people managed to
move from room to room at night. When I told Carlos that I intended
to go with or without him, I was bluffing, hoping to draw him. By
all accounts, cracking into his select clique was near impossible.
In the weeks I’d spent as part of the work unit, I’d seen a handful
of people sit with him and Doreen, but I couldn’t be sure that all
of them, or any of them, were in on the escape.

Then Carlos laughed. I couldn’t tell whether
he was laughing at me or at Jesse’s juvenile outburst. Doreen just
stared. I could see that I wasn’t getting anywhere so I walked
away. The trouble was that I didn’t know how to press. I didn’t
have the skill to make Carlos think he needed me despite the fact
that I would probably be nothing more than a liability. All I knew
how to do was pretend that I was serious and hope that something
would come of it.