LEAVING THE ARTWORK left me with an enormous sense of longing—as if torn away from the love of my life—and I walked heavily across the desert back into town. Workers were already arriving at their factories, but I walked against the stream and got on a bus back to Duma once the commuters had all filed out. I was hardly thinking about my placement, my assemblages; I was much too manic with excitement to sit on my stool and fidget with pipes.
When we got back to Duma, I hopped off the bus and headed to the housing area where Erich lived with his private garden. I couldn’t remember which house was his, so I killed time with my hands in my pockets, kicking at the gravel on the path. People walked by occasionally and I smiled at them or averted my eyes. I didn’t like loitering. Loitering felt criminal. I thought back to Erich telling me you can do whatever you want here. What I wanted to do was loiter and kick rocks. So that’s what I did. But I couldn’t kick the feeling that I was being judged for it.
Eventually, he appeared, sweaty from some kind of manual labor, a dark cat’s face of perspiration on his white t-shirt. He had a hand towel wrapped around his neck. He was walking down the lane toward me but hadn’t seen me yet. I watched him wipe the sweat from his forehead with the towel before I yelled his name.
“Zelnik, is that you?” he called.
“It’s me!” I called back. I met him halfway and we shook hands in the shadow of a cypress tree.
“What brings you here?”
“I’m looking for Miriana. Do you know where she is?”
Erich seemed troubled for a moment. Then something snapped and he beamed at me. “Sure, sure,” he said. “Let’s talk over here.” I followed him up the gravel path toward a cutaway in the trees that provided a bit of privacy. A single plastic chair, covered in tree gunk, sat in the clearing. He dragged it into the sun and sat while I stood. “What do you need to talk to her about?”
“I’ve just come from the desert!” I said.
Erich shot back in his chair. “You what?”
“The desert! Miriana’s work out in the desert. The officer’s büro. It was incredible,” I said. I wasn’t sure why he was so nonplussed. It was simple. “May I speak with her? I must speak with her about it.”
“Hold on a minute, Zelnik,” he said. “You were out there this early?”
“I spent the night there,” I explained. Saying that seemed odd, but it felt true. “The way the sun hits it in the morning. Sunrise over the kommandant’s office. It was breathtaking.”
“You spent the night? You’re crazy, man.”
“I missed the bus back to town.”
Erich laughed. “Crazy, man. You are not the Zelnik I remember.”
“I’m some version of him,” I said. What did Erich remember about me that I didn’t?
Erich stood, the plastic creaking beneath him. “Have they not given you a placement yet?”
“They did. It’s not right for me. It’s nothing. I’ll sort it out. Don’t worry about it.”
“Not right?”
“Well, it’s a bit—”
“Beneath your station?”
“I didn’t want to put it that way.”
“That’s all right,” Erich said. “I’ll put it that way for you.” He turned his head to think. He had bumps on his scalp and chin. I could smell his musk.
“You know, I don’t even know what you do here,” I said.
“When you pulled in, did you drive past a really strange, glassy building, on a little lake? Kind of looked like a flower?”
“It was dark when we got in.”
“You can’t miss it. Next time you’re out by the athletic complex, look for it. That’s where I work. You’d have to be blind to miss it, Zelnik.”
“I’ll look for it.”
“If I could get you a transfer, would you be interested?”
“Sure,” I said. “I mean, yes.”
“Would you be willing to do a favor for me in exchange for it?”
“It depends on the favor, I guess.”
He must have interpreted this as bargaining. “If you help me, in addition to a transfer, I’ll see if I can bump you up on the list to get one of these beauties,” he said. He gestured at the houses with lush gardens. “I had to wait a long time to get mine.”
“I thought you said you were here when they were built. I thought you just picked one and moved in.”
“There’s a high turnover,” he said.
“Why?”
“You’re in the Crescent, right? Someone in your building is manufacturing pamphlets. Behind one of your neighbors’ doors there’s a person with a printing operation. If you can find out who he is, you’ll get your transfer.”
This didn’t explain what he meant by high turnover.
“What’s wrong with making pamphlets?”
“They’re inflammatory.” Erich smiled at me, a real smile. “If you look around, you’ll see one of them. He dumps them in the plaza sometimes. No one ever sees him. You probably have a pamphlet under your door right now.”
“Huh.”
“You’ll do it?”
“I guess I can look around.”
“Say, that’s great.” Erich shook my hand. His palm was like wet sandpaper against mine. He glanced behind him for a moment like he was expecting someone. “So you want to meet Miriana?”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes.”
“Grand. Come with me.”
I followed Erich off of the shaded path and back toward his house.
“Zelnik, any luck finding your uncle?”
“None yet. Someone at the factory said they knew him.”
“And did they?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I think she was confused.” We walked along in silence for a minute. I wondered if Erich would ring Miriana from his house phone, if he had one—or maybe Miriana lived in one of the neighboring houses.
“Well, let me know if there’s anything I can do to help,” he said in afterthought. He led me around his garden. I was going to take him up on the offer, but suddenly we were through the front door and standing in a foyer that gave way to a sunken living room. A wall of windows let in the blistering morning light. He pointed to a leather sectional sofa and I sat; then he disappeared around a corner, and I heard clanging. I looked at a generic landscape painting that hung on the wall. I heard Erich say something but couldn’t tell whether he was speaking to me or into the phone. I rose to my feet and was about to call to him when Miriana Grannoff walked into the room. She paused, startled, hand on her heart.
“Mr. Zelnik?” she said. “Is it really you?”
Heat flooded my cheeks. “I can’t believe you remember me,” I said. I felt the chill of nervous sweat on the back of my neck.
Grannoff came forward, her red-and-gold yukata flowing behind her like a fishing net. She extended her hand—skeletal, freckled, fingers downturned and laden with rings—and I took it, my thumb closing over her knuckles. She looked at me and smiled, pale pink lips parting to reveal perfect teeth. She was the exact image of my memory, gracefully aged a decade, lines deeper on her face but all life force remaining.
“It’s wonderful to see you, former student Zelnik,” she said, using the formal mode of address. It was jarring to hear my home language spoken; Erich and I only conversed in English, per Duma’s regulation.
She sat on the sofa next to me, crossed her legs. Her feet were bare. She stretched her toes and lit a cigarette. Erich came out of the kitchen carrying three drinks in a triangle between his pressed hands. Water glasses, ice tinkling.
“Hot out there,” he said.
I sipped from the proffered glass; it was not water. It burned on the way down. I turned red as Erich sat in an armchair near Grannoff. They looked at each other and laughed. I dissociated.
“Zelnik agreed to help me find the pamphleteer,” said Erich.
Grannoff gave me a long, approving nod. “That’s fabulous, former student Zelnik. We’re proud of you.”
I took another sip. The melting ice had turned the drink milky white.
“A gift from the brass,” said Erich, holding his glass up to the light. It split into three rays on the far wall.
“Oh, hold that, Erich. Let me get my camera.” Grannoff put a hand on my knee and hoisted herself up. She ran off into the hallway, her feet making a pleasant shuffling sound.
“Hurry. My arm’s getting tired.”
“Shut up,” she said, returning. She had a self-developing film camera cradled in one hand; in the other her drink sloshed over the side of its glass. I held the glass for her while she crouched by Erich’s knees and framed the shot, the camera at an angle. She took a shot, removed the printed photograph, then took another. Then she put them on the counter to develop.
I watched Erich watching Grannoff while this scene transpired. His bottom lip was trapped between his teeth. She rested her arm over his knees while she flapped a photograph back and forth. When she had taken enough for her liking, she gathered them in a stack and returned to her seat next to me.
“No good. No good. No good,” she said, chucking the photos one by one across the living room. One was decent. She handed it to me. She had managed to capture the refraction of Erich’s glass in such a way that the light was unidentifiable as light; instead, I saw three nearly perpendicular beams, like the wires of a suspension bridge against a pitch-black sky.
“It’s wonderful, Professor Grannoff.”
“You must call me Miriana.”
“I will.” I tried to hand it back to her.
“Keep it. You really think so?”
“Yes,” I said. “Thank you.” I put it carefully in my pocket.
“A gift from me to you.”
“Thank you.”
I was aware of the clipped way I was speaking. I was embarrassed by it but, paradoxically, I didn’t care. I felt at ease—I felt I could do anything in the company of these friends. I began to lose track of myself in my mind’s eye. I was aware of an awareness that I was impressionable—and aware that I couldn’t do anything about it. The urge to speak with Miriana about her work hadn’t abated, though I didn’t want to offend her by changing the subject. I wanted to impress her so badly.
Erich shifted in his chair, cast a leg over the armrest. “Tell her where you’ve come from, Zelnik.”
Miriana raised an eyebrow. “Yes, tell us.”
“Watch her expression when you do, Zelnik. Don’t miss it.”
“Where, darling?”
“The desert,” I said. “Your piece in the desert. The kommandant’s office.”
“Tell her what you did there,” said Erich.
“I spent the night there,” I said. “I slept on the floor.”
Miriana’s face did indeed do something extraordinary. Her eyes widened twofold; her ears pulled back; her jaw fell open. I saw where the base of her tongue plunged down into her throat. At last, her hand found the lapels of her robe. She tossed them open, revealing her freckled clavicle.
“It’s so hot,” she said, fanning herself with her hand. The way she shifted so abruptly from the conversation made me think it had ended. But it hadn’t. “Zelnik—why on Earth?”
This was my cue. “Professor Grannoff. Miriana. It was an honor to have seen your work. After you left Barnova, a cohort of your supporters spearheaded a letter-writing campaign that generated over one thousand letters. We picketed outside of President Stankov’s office until the police shot at us. Many of us were expelled. When we learned that you had emigrated, we were, with respect, distraught. The movement died. Some of my classmates—I don’t know what happened to them.” I took a sip of my drink. “And now, to find you here, to see your work—well, to see what you have been doing, the memorials, the monument. I understood. You needed to emigrate.”
“And the work?”
“It’s the best you’ve ever done.”
“The house? You love it that much?”
“And the lamps.”
Miriana looked at Erich. “He saw the lamps?”
“Zelnik sees everything,” said Erich.
“And you thought the office was brilliant?”
“Brilliant isn’t a strong enough word,” I said. “To recontextualize a place as banal and terrible as that office. To put it in the middle of the desert. You took a site of horror and, displacing it, turned it into a monument. There’s a real mastery in it. All of a sudden I was back at the Architectural Institute, studying the works of the masters.” I sighed in awe. “How did you stumble onto that idea? When did you learn to fabricate like that? In South America?”
“Yes, in Buenos Aires I met a group of German expats, in the suburbs. I learned a lot from them,” Miriana said. She placed her finger and thumb on either side of her right eye, then pried the lids apart. She leaned in close, her pupil shrinking, iris roaming; she drank in my face as I examined the fractal blood vessels in the white. She leaned back. “I met Erich there,” she said. She kited her hand in his direction and he took it by the fingers.
“Hello, dear,” he said languidly. She was twenty, twenty-five years his senior.
“Hello, dear,” said Miriana.
“I moved to Argentina after graduation. The best decision I ever made.”
Miriana extinguished her cigarette in her nearly full drink. Then she took my hand and turned to me. “Hello, dear,” she said. Her hand was soft and warm, and I was overcome by how few strange hands had touched mine in my life. “I’m touched you like it, dear,” she said. “I am proud of that work—but you have not yet seen my very best work.” The three of us were connected, with Miriana as conduit. I felt an energy flow out of me and into her—but when I saw it pass through her chest, out of her arm, and toward Erich, I pulled my hand away. The serenity I’d been feeling dried up. Miriana and—Erich?
“Hm,” she said.
I looked at my glass, sweating invitingly on the table. I was thirsty. Erich stood before I could reach for it.
“We’ve got things to do, don’t we?” he said. He helped me to my feet.
Miriana kissed me on the cheek and ear. “Find the pamphleteer,” she said. “The art is trifling.” She disappeared into the hallway, her yukata billowing behind her. There was still so much I wanted to say to her. I turned to Erich in desperation.
“Can I see her again?”
He led me to the door. I was outside before I regained myself. I walked away from Erich’s as if I’d been wound up and released.
“Good luck,” he called out.
I volleyed back that I wouldn’t need it.