for Xander
BY A. MOLOTKOV
It’s been a while since I learned my verdict. They don’t let prisoners keep track of time. An old trick. We are not allowed books either. The grey, concrete wall is porous under my fingers. I’ve spent a lot of time with the wall, thinking about my last hour. It’s a choice many struggle with, but I don’t need to struggle. I could have spent it with my husband, but the trouble is, I’m almost sure he’s the one who turned me in. They’ve been trying to get to him for quite a while. I knew they had suspicions about my work with the Resistance, but they needed evidence, just to wrap it all up neatly.
I was tasked with spreading the information about border crossings. I had to make sure I shared with the right people, not government spies. I was good at it, reading faces, knowing who to trust. I hope some of those I helped have made it.
For a long time, my husband wouldn’t play along with the investigation. Sure, he had refused to join the Resistance, had explained it away with fake logic of the privileged. But I didn’t think him the type to betray his own wife. Then one day I noticed distance in his eyes. I wonder what made him change his mind. As a scientist, he was always afraid to lose the grants, the funds. But was that enough? They may have found something else to get at him—some secret in his past I may not be privy to. In a way, I still care for him. We were together for many years. Do I love him less because I think he betrayed me? Did I already love him less?
This solitary confinement—it seemed a delight at first, a reprieve. Even being caught was an odd relief. But loneliness didn’t take long to set in. Some days, I have found myself impatient for the ending.
It must be summer outside. My cell is hot. At least water is in unlimited supply. I’m going to spend the hour with my son. They shipped him off to fight in Marpanso Bay. I haven’t heard from him in a while, don’t even know if he’s alive.
I remember each year of his life, especially the early years. When I’m gone, who will remember with a clear conscience, not through a lens of betrayal? I’m torn by the thought of all these extinguished memories, lost connections. But we share the responsibility for the times we live in. We burn in their fire.
My son probably doesn’t know about my arrest. If he survives the war, he will have troubles of his own because of my status. I don’t have the room in my heart to feel bad about that. Our nation’s hearts have been recast in iron; they don’t beat as fast as normal human hearts.
My final meal arrives. I’ve lost interest in meals. They feed prisoners once a day, following the official doctrine: the state cannot afford to waste resources on its enemies. I was out of my mind with hunger the first few days here, until some nerve centers in me must have shut down. I don’t feel hungry anymore. I’m quite skinny now. Still, I would eat mechanically when the food arrived. A blue plastic bowl, a disposable white spoon. Refusing food would have been unnecessary. But this time, I can refuse. I enjoy this small freedom.
I sit still for a while, staring at this last useless morsel of mush in its crude container, at this wall that has been my companion.
Then they come for me.
The unlocking routine follows, full of clicks and clanks. I’m led through a series of stale corridors, their peeling walls off-white—through several gates and locks. We enter the EM office, my hands still cuffed behind my back as if a woman of my size poses any threat. The technician checks the number tattooed on my arm. He is heavy-set and has a minor difficulty breathing, like a long-time smoker or an asthmatic. His sullen face is covered with beads of sweat, even though the air is cool in contrast to my cell. The office is cluttered: paperwork, books, coffee cups.
“How does it work?” I ask.
“How does what work?” He doesn’t look at me.
“The Time Machine.”
“It’s not a time machine. It’s an Experience Module.” The man’s voice is patient, but he still avoids eye contact. He has said this before, many times.
I understand his hesitation. The technology is impressive, but not the fact that it is restricted to this particular use. The technician is a middle-aged man. When he went to school, EM was expected to become universally available. This was before the revolution. Things changed.
“You tell me the hour you want, and I reproduce it for you, out of your own brain,” the technician continues. “As simple as that. Just pick a memory. Any memory.” He glances at me, momentarily excited by what EM can do. The next instant, his brown eyes look wounded, insecure about his role in this new state of affairs.
I explain my choice. It’s a memory full of adrenaline and hope, fear and redemption, loss and recovery. It’s a memory in which panic is rewarded through reinforcement of love.
It’s from a time before my son’s mind was made to bloom in the wrong direction. Many things he read were ones I was unable to intercept, official ideology. Eventually, nothing else was allowed, only state-sanctioned publications. Repeated statements stick in people’s minds. My son became a soldier. The last time I saw him, I felt as if most of him were no longer my son.
The opposite door opens. I’m led into an adjacent room—a small space painted white, a shabby leatherette couch against a wall. No technology of any kind. It must be the waiting room. They uncuff me. I’m allowed to sit down. The guard steps outside. It’s easy to visualize him waiting there, his bulky, useless body leaning against the wall. I wonder if the execution room is in this building. The door opens. A few seconds pass before someone comes in.
My son.
How did they know so well? I asked for a scene from twenty years ago, and here I am. The door disappears, then the walls. I’m on the playground.
He’s so small. He climbs one of those metal bar structures—he struggles to make each step—yellow, green, red. No coordination in his hands, his feet. Yet, his persistence is already obvious, or so I would like to think in my parental blindness.
On some days he insists that I play with him, but today he is content in the world of his own, a climbing world. I watch. I think I’ll remember today. It’s not quite evening yet, but not day anymore—the sun is subdued. The world is crisp, yet unreal. I’m glad to have a few moments to do nothing. We must have had time for this in the centuries past, and then lost it, so recently.
My son moves on to the blue see-saw, trying to understand how this astounding piece of machinery works, lacking a partner to activate its magic. He lifts up the lower end, brings it back down in slow motion. At this moment, I feel how much I love him, what I would do to protect him—this evolving entity whose emotional horizons are expanding every day, whose future is as full of possibilities as this strangely lit sky above us.
An old man approaches, a white frame of beard and hair around his tan face, a green, nondescript waterproof jacket.
“How old is he?”
“Almost three.”
“They grow so quickly.” An obvious thing to say, but somehow, so real—and so hard to imagine just yet. The old man is a distinct personality, full of energy and cynicism, not extremely educated, yet rife with unexpected, exciting judgments. He draws me out of my relaxed solitude. His children are grown up. He mentions this with some bitterness. They have their own lives. They don’t call often. His bitterness is mixed with relief. I wonder if twenty years from now I will feel the same bitterness, same relief.
The man’s white sweater is no longer white. It’s stretched around his protruding belly, and I wonder if his mother might have knitted it for him decades ago, if this small unit of wool has an emotional history.
I glance at the play structure to check on my son.
He is not there.
I panic.
I wish I knew what to do when something like this…I call his name. No response. Barely two minutes since I saw him there. How far can a child go in two minutes? I check both directions along the street, then all the escapes a small being might explore.
He’s nowhere.
“My son! Where is my son?”
“Wasn’t he just here?” The old man is unhelpful.
I’m frantic as I bounce around the playground, checking under the slide, inside the pink gazebo, behind the climbing wall—nothing—and again: under the slide, behind the garbage bin—no. Under the bench. He’s not there. He’s not there. By the slide, the hedge, the tree.
No.
The bench. The slide.
No.
The wall.
A. Molotkov’s poetry collections are “The Catalog of Broken Things,” “Application of Shadows” and “Synonyms for Silence.” His work appears in Prairie Schooner, Kenyon Review Online and most other quality journals. His prose is represented by Laura Strachan at Strachan Lit; he co-edits The Inflectionist Review. Visit him at AMolotkov.com