THE LANGUAGE OF THEIR YOUTH

The Admiral had not been well for several months, slow to rise, aches in the joints, fatigue. He had stopped sleeping through the night, although insomnia was not an altogether new development. However, this sleeplessness concerned not his mind or memories, but his breathing. He was unable to find a position in which he could take in the large pockets of air needed for adequate rest. His wife, Marie, always slept soundly on the opposite side of the bed, curled underneath the sheets, oblivious. Two weeks before he was called upon to oversee the submarine rescue, he had coughed blood into a handkerchief and scheduled an appointment with his physician. He showed the doctor the bloodied handkerchief, specks the color of rust. The doctor nodded and frowned and arranged tests. He counseled him to avoid stress and travel, but the Admiral was never one to heed such advice.

Now he sat on a plane that carried a six-person rescue crew and, in the cargo level, diving equipment and two Super Scorpios—small, unmanned submarines. He was nearly fifty and approaching retirement, but had been assigned to the mission because of his experience with the Kursk, another Russian submarine, seven years prior. The entire crew had died. All one hundred and eighteen of them. Even though the mission had failed, the Admiral was among the few who understood the procedures, the equipment and manpower needed, the many dangers.

It was close to midnight in Russia. From the window of the plane, through patchy clouds, he saw the sea below, dark and sprawling. The Admiral had always enjoyed flying, the temporary existence between two worlds, a state of being he had never been able to name. In an hour they would land at the Kamchatka naval base, located on Russia’s eastern coast.

Papers and charts were stacked in the seat next to him. He had read everything twice, pausing only to take notes on a legal pad. The most recent reports confirmed a fishing net had coiled around an antenna—designed to monitor the activities of international vessels—on the AS-28, stranding the submarine on the floor of the Pacific, and the Russian navy lacked rescue vehicles capable of operating at the necessary depths. The submarine carried seven men, even though it was only equipped for four. According to the reports, their air supply would last for another twenty hours.

The Admiral removed his glasses and polished the square lenses on his shirtsleeve. The seven-hour flight from the British naval base to Russia had exhausted him and he was developing a terrible headache. He inhaled deeply, feeling his lungs expand, and struggled to direct his energy towards what was, at this moment, his only care: a successful mission.

 

One of the last things Fyodor remembered was watching the sonar, the neon-green lines and circles pulsing on-screen. The submarine was quiet, save for the hum of the propeller, and the lights, sharp and unnaturally white, reached into the corners and pushed out the shadows. The crew worked in silence, reviewing coordinates and navigational charts.

“Just a few more weeks until we’re back on the base,” Kristof said. He looked up from a control panel and yawned. “I’m sick of boat food.”

They ate fresh meals for the first two weeks, then switched over to canned, frozen, and dried foods. Fyodor always looked forward to pizza on Thursday nights, although he hated the canned fish, which they were having tonight. Canned salmon with pickled vegetables, probably.

“And the coffee,” Boris said. “Why does the coffee always taste like shit?”

“Yeah,” Kristof said. “It’s worse than my wife’s.”

Fyodor shrugged and went back to watching the sonar, waiting for the lines to shift and indicate the presence of another submarine. The screen had been empty all afternoon, the waters calm. These days at sea were interminably long—he missed the buzz of cities, the anonymity, the freedom of movement.

For the last decade, Fyodor had thought only of one woman. Two years after his mother died, Anya had moved into the apartment down the hall from the one-bedroom he and his father shared on the fifth floor of a tall gray building on the outskirts of St. Petersburg. She was thirteen, three years older than Fyodor and several inches taller, with skinny legs and dark braids that swung when she walked.

After her arrival, he began opening the door every time he heard movement in the hallway, a cough or creak in the floorboards. Anya was usually accompanied by her mother, but sometimes he found her standing alone in the hall and they talked about the other tenants and the planes they heard flying over the apartment building at night. She tried to teach him to balance a rubber ball on top of his head; she could walk down the stairs and up again without losing it. Whenever the ball tumbled from his head and bounced off his nose or shoulder, she whistled and caught the rubber sphere before it hit the floor.

When Anya was eighteen, she left St. Petersburg for a secretarial job in Moscow. From the foggy and smudged window, he watched her wait for the bus. A small suitcase sat on the sidewalk; a red purse hung from her shoulder. When she boarded the bus, he waved and kissed the pane.

He did not see her again until this past February, when he was on leave in Moscow and went to the Boarhouse for a drink. Her dark hair had been cut short and dyed burgundy, but he still recognized her behind the bar, a black apron tied around her waist. After her shift ended, they walked around the city, talked and laughed and allowed their shoulders and hands to brush together. Her last boyfriend—she looked away when she said the word—had gone to Madrid with another woman. After he left her, she had stayed in bed for a week and lost the office job. Now she worked at a café during the day, the Boarhouse at night. While she spoke, Fyodor touched the base of her neck, felt her spine, and the tips of her hair grazed his knuckles. Before they parted, she wrote her address on a paper napkin and kissed his forehead. He tucked the napkin inside his jacket pocket and watched her disappear into Teatralnaya Square, crowded by people flowing out of the shops and movie theaters, into a veil of falling snow.

A loud crack echoed throughout the control room, followed by a low roar, which seemed to come from the back of the submarine. Then silence. The vessel lurched and shuddered; the lights wavered and dimmed. Kristof was knocked to the floor, Boris slammed against the wall. Fyodor reached into his pocket and rubbed the napkin Anya had given him. He had kept it on hand since the beginning of their mission and the paper was beginning to fray. Erik, who had been off watch and sleeping in the bunk space, ran into the control room. Lieutenant Kozlova turned away from the crew for a moment, his body swaying as though he was going to faint, then exhaled slowly and looked through the periscope.

 

Sitting in Lieutenant Vladimir’s dark office, the Admiral thought again of the Kursk. The submarine had been performing training exercises when an explosion stranded it on the ocean floor. Several men had died in the explosion and the rest suffocated. The request for aid came far too late for the British navy to assemble a successful rescue. The gravest of operations, he believed, required the most planning. He straightened his jacket and smoothed his pants, expecting the Lieutenant to come through the door at any moment.

A window stretched across the far wall of the office. Outside, four British officers stood in the shadows. In the darkness he recognized Private Marks, a diver and the only woman on the rescue team, by her posture: arms crossed and legs slightly spread. She was an attractive woman, with blond hair that bounced just above her shoulders and elegant sloping cheekbones. She had dozed for much of the flight and the Admiral caught himself staring at her more than once. Even just a few years earlier, he would have tried to sleep with her.

Lieutenant Vladimir entered the room, closing the door behind him. He shook hands with the Admiral, then sat in the leather chair behind his desk and clicked on a lamp, filling the center of the office with an orange glow. The Admiral disapproved of his handshake; his long fingers felt limp and clammy. He was a young man, no older than thirty-five, with full hair and a creaseless face, save for the gathered skin around the corners of his eyes. He opened a drawer, removed an envelope cutter, and began tapping the gold point against his open palm.

The Admiral folded his hands in his lap. “Have you been in contact with the men?”

Lieutenant Vladimir nodded.

“What kind of shape are they in?”

“Terrible.” He suspended the point in midair; the gold shimmered in the pale light. “They all remember the Kursk, of course.” His accent was smooth, his voice low-pitched.

“Of course.” He glanced out the window. The divers were gone. “In all public statements, and this, Lieutenant, is of the utmost importance, say the men are remaining calm and brave. If they survive, you don’t want them emerging as cowards.”

The Lieutenant returned the envelope cutter to the drawer and went to the window, where he stood with his hands tucked behind his back. “The Japanese have dispatched three ships and the Americans are on their way.” He turned to the Admiral. “But it looks as though you’ve beaten them to the job.”

“Tell the sailors to lie flat and breathe as lightly as possible. To conserve oxygen.”

“The amount of air such actions will conserve is negligible.”

“Yes.” When the Admiral rose, unsteadiness attacked his body. His vision blurred, merging the Lieutenant’s silhouette with the moonlight and shadows. He blinked twice, then continued. “But they must feel like they’re playing a part in the saving of their own lives.”

 

The crew stood silent and still as the instructions came in over the radio. Fyodor crossed his arms and stared at one of the control panels, the buttons and levers. Lieutenant Kozlova held the speaker close to his ear and angled his head towards the garbled voice. He was a slender man with pointed features and thick waves of black hair.  Fyodor had heard talk about the Lieutenant’s lack of qualifications—cowardice, some even said—but he had nevertheless been promoted through the ranks because of his father’s and grandfather’s distinguished service. As a sign of their disrespect, when the Lieutenant wasn’t around, the sailors called him by his first name: Lieutenant Igor gives orders. Lieutenant Igor isn’t happy today.

When all communication ended, the Lieutenant set down the radio and covered his face with his hands. Then he ordered the men to turn off the heat and lie down. Some resisted, bending at the waist and muttering for several minutes before joining the rest of the crew on the floor. Fyodor wrapped his hand around the napkin, squeezing it into a soft ball, then kneeled and stretched out on his back. They had been trained for emergency situations, to cut the power as much as possible, to breathe lightly and limit their movements, but somehow those acts now seemed like an acknowledgment of doom.

Fyodor had never paid close attention to the ceiling of the submarine. In the low light, it looked skeletal, gray pipes and metal, the paint chipped in some places to reveal the bone white color underneath. He felt the warm air thinning, the cold seeping in through the walls. The submarine was twelve meters long—a control room, a bunk space, and the cramped mess and wash rooms. The walls were lined with navigational and weapons control panels, the center of the floor empty except for the periscope and a plotting table.

They had been on mission since March and were scheduled to return to land in June, just a few weeks away. He was planning to go straight from the naval base to Moscow, to Anya’s apartment. He had given considerable thought to his reappearance in her life: how many times he would knock on her door, how loudly, what he would do if she didn’t answer, if he would stop on the way for flowers. The moment in which he would climb the stairs of her building and stand in front of her door had seemed so close, so possible, although it was beginning to drift away—like a dream upon waking.

“They’ve called in the British and the Americans,” the Lieutenant said. “They’re going to attempt a rescue.”

“Remember the Kursk?” Ivan’s voice bounced around the control room. He lay directly below Fyodor, so close he could have nudged the top of his head with his boots. “They brought in the British and the Americans then, too. And the crew still suffocated.”

“I saw pictures of their bodies in the news,” Erik added. “Piled on top of each other. Stiff and white.”

“Shut up,” Boris said. “You’re using my air.”

Fyodor wondered about the rescue crew, their ages and ranks, their origins and the families they had left behind.  He thought of the Kursk, the candlelight vigils held outside cathedrals, the pictures he had seen in the newspaper. He remembered photographs of an older man standing by the raised submarine, tall and angular, his face drawn and gray. The man was distinguished, with good posture and well-defined features, handsome even in his somberness, so unlike Fyodor’s own father and the men of his childhood neighborhood. He remembered being struck that such a man, someone who looked utterly powerful and judicious, could have failed so completely.

 

In a dark bathroom, down the hall from Lieutenant Vladimir’s office, the Admiral kneeled in front of the toilet and vomited. His torso spasmed; the pain bloomed in his stomach and spread to his chest. He rounded his shoulders and coughed violently; his throat burned. The Admiral heard a woman’s voice through the door and wondered if it was Private Marks; he turned on the faucet to cover the noise. Afterwards, he rinsed his mouth and splashed water onto his face, smoothed his thinning gray hair and patted his skin dry with a wad of toilet paper. He leaned against the cold sink until his hands stopped trembling. He never turned on the lights.

 

When the radios died, Kristof—whose wife had recently given birth to twin boys—began to cry softly. Fyodor watched the quiet tremors of his chest and shoulders, redness spreading across his cheeks and the tip of his nose, his knuckles swollen and white.

“Quiet,” Boris shouted, slamming a fist against the floor.

Fyodor inhaled and savored the feeling of air pooling in his chest. The metal had turned icy. His temples ached; his tongue felt thick and dry, filling his mouth.

Lieutenant Kozlova told Boris to stop shouting and Kristof to stop crying, for fuck’s sake. They grunted in response. All the sailors wore blue pants, white shirts underneath their jackets, and thick boots. Fyodor imagined them arranged on the floor—rows of dark bars. The navy was a drab chorus, the steady drone a rhythm he could slip into and out of without so much as a ripple. He entered the service right after he came of age and found his father dead on the bedroom floor, a trio of empty vodka bottles nestled in the carpet. He had left the apartment furnished, taking only a single duffel bag, a black-and-white photograph of his mother, and a postcard Anya had sent him from Moscow, a glossy image of the Kremlin’s towers and gilded roofs. He received it several months before his father died. It was the last time she wrote to him. I have met someone, she had scrawled across the back in her scrunched, messy script. A photographer. He likes to take my picture.

When he and Anya were teenagers, they built a language from sounds. The doors and walls in the apartment building were thin, allowing for easy communication. One knock on the front door was a simple greeting. Two quick raps meant their parents were preparing to leave. And three knocks meant they were alone. Any thumping on the walls meant they weren’t allowed to go out and might get in trouble for loitering by the door. Sometimes, when they were together, they changed this into a language of words. Knock, knock, knock, Anya would say before leaning towards him and resting her lips on his cheek.

There had been one night, shortly before he left for the navy, when he went out for a drink and met a woman. She was young, with bleached hair and a tiny diamond in her nose. She smoked one cigarette after another, sucking in her cheeks and closing her eyes with each drag. They went back to his apartment and when he woke in the morning she was gone, a few pale strands of hair stuck to the pillow.

Fyodor thought of how the radio sounded before it went dead: a voice from land filled the submarine, followed by static and a long hiss. Lieutenant Kozlova had punched the buttons and shouted into the speaker before finally wrapping both hands around it and bowing his head. From the floor, he had a diagonal view of the Lieutenant holding the lifeless radio against his chest. He wondered what their final instructions were, what else they had wanted to tell the sailors. Perhaps someone from another country would have gotten on the radio, an expert in emergency rescues, and told the men of their plans.

 

The Admiral had decided that the Scorpios, equipped with underwater cameras and steel appendages for cutting, should be lowered into the water first, followed by the divers. As the ship left the naval base, the crew gathered around him on deck and he dispatched his orders. They were fifty miles from the rescue site. It would take hours to reach the stranded vessel. After the briefing, the crew scattered to prepare for the rescue.

The Admiral remained on deck, standing close to the stern. The sky was still dark, the moon a milky crescent. When he was a student at the Royal Naval Academy, his father visited every other Sunday and they took walks to Portsmouth Harbour. His mother rarely came. She was frightened of the sea; her brother had drowned in the Severn River when they were children. But the Admiral had, long before his father delivered him to the Naval Academy, been obsessed with immersion. Not with the rush of cold or the noise that filled his ears when he dived, but with finding ways to exist underneath the surface or above it—for this felt, to him, like conquering.

The blast that stranded the Kursk was caused by a torpedo exploding inside one of the compartments. The submarine had been carrying two dozen warheads. When the divers reached the vessel, the escape hatch was so damaged it couldn’t be opened. The submarine was too large—over one hundred and fifty meters long—to be raised in time. When the Kursk was finally emptied, the ship’s log and two notes written by sailors were discovered along with the bodies. One of the notes revealed that small fires broke out as a result of the explosion, clouding the cabins with smoke.

After it became apparent that they were not going to save the sailors aboard the Kursk, President Putin went on television and promised every measure would be taken to ensure the bodies were returned to their families. The Admiral was present when the hatch was opened and the men were dragged out, their skin waxy and gray, limbs stiff like dancers halted in mid-twirl. Most were very young, their faces fleshy and clean-shaven.

In recent months, he had caught himself wondering what his son’s obsessions would have been—if he had had a son. Marie only conceived once and the baby was lost at eight weeks, before they could determine the sex. He did not believe in considering the impossible, so when his wife’s infertility was confirmed, he’d ceased to think about fatherhood and the way her stomach would grow in pregnancy. But now he could not keep himself from such thoughts. Would his son have inherited an obsession with the sea? Or would he have wanted to climb mountains? Cross deserts? Would he have had any obsessions at all?

He heard a cough and looked up. Lieutenant Vladimir stood before him, his dark eyebrows pulled together, his thin mouth sagging.

“We’ve lost communication.”

The Admiral nodded.

“You don’t look well.”

He shook his head, dismissing the observation. “Let’s review the coordinates again.” He stared past the Lieutenant at Private Marks, who was talking to another officer on deck, the wind blowing her hair across her face.

 

The submarine had darkened. The lights were burning out. The roof and walls grew thick with shadows. The dimness made the cabin feel smaller, although the spaces between the men seemed to have lengthened. Kristof wiped his nose on his jacket collar. Fyodor rubbed his face and swallowed. If only one could be saved, he thought, it should be Kristof, with his pretty wife and twin boys. He had seen pictures of her, a tall woman with auburn hair that hung straight down her back.

No one depended on Fyodor—with the possible exception of Anya—who, for all he knew, might have already forgotten his promise to return. Perhaps by now she had changed apartments or even left the city. Returned to her old lover or taken up with another man. He shut his eyes for a moment and searched for her face, but saw only blackness. His chest throbbed. His mind felt hazy, as though he was suspended between sleep and wakefulness. This seemed a particularly cruel end, allotting him enough lucid time to consider his longings and regrets and what, if a future existed, he would alter. And these were the things, in the quiet belly of the submarine, Fyodor had decided: to leave the navy, find Anya and pull her close like he did when they were young, visit his mother’s grave in St. Petersburg then stand atop the bridge that stretched across the canal and toss a coin into the water, to scatter his father’s ashes in the countryside. His remains currently sat in a plastic container, stuffed inside a sock to conceal the contents in the event of an inspection, on the top shelf of Fyodor’s locker at the naval base—revenge for all the times his father drunkenly slapped and kicked him. And, finally, he would register for violin lessons at a music school in Moscow. When he was a child, shortly after his mother passed, a violinist moved into the apartment next door and stayed through the winter. Fyodor still remembered pressing his ear against the wall and listening to the music, a melancholy hum, the power unfolding gradually.

He stretched a little and bumped against Kristof, then shifted his weight and bent his legs, his muscles taut and aching. The skin underneath his fingernails had lost its color. He exhaled and started counting the white flecks on the ceiling. He was beginning to wish for a quicker death.

 

The Admiral had returned to the deck for the sunrise and now gazed across the sea. The sun rested on the cusp of the horizon, thinning the darkness and shading the sky with blue. He raised his hands and stared at the webbing between his fingers. His skin looked transparent, the green and blue veins vivid and swollen. He poked a large vein on the underside of his wrist and watched it slide back and forth under his fingertip.

When he first entered Lieutenant Vladimir’s unlit office, knowing he would be waiting for at least ten minutes, the Admiral had stood behind the desk, located the phone, and dialed the number of his home in Hampshire. The phone rang four times before Marie picked up; she had always been a heavy sleeper. When she answered, he heard voices in the background. She often fell asleep on the living room sofa with the television on when he was away.

“Hello?”

He imagined her sitting up, straw-colored hair falling across her face, and rubbing her eyes, reaching for the remote and turning down the volume. She had a long slender neck and small hands.

“Hello,” she said again.

“Are you still downstairs?” he asked.

“Yes.” She yawned. “It’s very late here.”

“What were you watching?”

“EastEnders,” she replied. “Phil’s in the hospital again.” Sometimes when he called her from the field he asked her to talk about everyday things, so he wasn’t surprised when she offered to tell him more about the television program and, without waiting for his reply, began to relay this week’s betrayals.

His wife was a devoted, cheerful woman, who always brought a hand to her mouth when she read or laughed. Except in the months that followed the miscarriage, when he would wake and go downstairs and find her sitting on the front porch with a wool blanket wrapped around her legs, her face withered, her eyes puffy from crying. Even then, she never said anything about the late night phone calls or his unexplained absences. He couldn’t decide whether she was blind to his indiscretions or had chosen to ignore them.

“Are you there?”

“Yes,” he said, not realizing how long he had been quiet.

“I thought you’d gone.”

“No. Just listening.”

She continued talking, describing the new foliage and her progress in the garden. When it was his turn to reply, he once again fell silent.

He had returned to the doctor’s office three days before the submarine crisis. The test results confirmed what he had already sensed. The cancer cells had spread, the doctor explained, consulting his charts, although the progression could be slowed. He had yet to tell Marie and now wanted to say something that would prepare her for what lay ahead, as though such words existed, for he was beginning to feel the burden of his secrecy.

“Are you all right?” she asked, the pitch of her voice rising.

He concentrated on the rhythm of her breathing, winding the phone cord around his index finger. She waited a few more minutes, then hung up. He stood in the dark for a little while longer, the dial tone bleating in his ear.

The Admiral looked across the ship and saw Private Marks, dressed in windbreaker pants, a sweatshirt, and a baseball cap. She stood close to the edge of the deck, her arms crossed, her head tilted downwards, as though she was staring at something in the water.

“Low surface tension,” she said as the Admiral approached. “Good for diving.”

Her ponytail sprouted out the back of the baseball cap, messy in a way that reminded him of a child’s hair. “How long have you been with us?” he asked. “At the base in Hampshire.”

“Nearly five years,” she replied. “The first place I went after I finished my training at the Academy.”

He wondered if she’d loved the water as a child, whether her parents detected any early signs of her talent for diving. “This time it will be easier,” he said. “The AS-28 is much smaller than the Kursk, less than fifteen meters.”

She tugged at the brim of her cap. Her hands, he noticed, were small, her fingernails cut short. “A lot of time has passed, sir.”

The calculated air supply was approximate and after one of his own men reworked the math, the Admiral decided the Russians had been generous in their estimate. And without the radios, they had no way of knowing how the sailors were doing, if they were beginning to lose consciousness, or worse.

The pain in his head returned. He slipped a hand inside his pocket and felt the tissue he had used to conceal a nosebleed on the plane, crumpled and brittle with dried blood. He slumped forward.

“All right, sir?”

She squeezed his upper arm and her touch steadied him. The sea and Private Marks blurred for a moment, then regained their shape.

“Time to prepare for the dive,” he said, patting her hand. “You’ll be needed soon.”

 

Edvard, the youngest crew member at nineteen, who had not spoken since the submarine became stranded, suddenly began to talk. He went slowly, pausing after each word and biting his upper lip. His voice reminded Fyodor of wind passing through tree leaves, fluid and hushed. None of the other men, not even Boris, stopped him, sensing the urgency in his voice. His brother had been aboard the Kursk.

“My mother calls the sea a mass grave. It has taken more men, she always says, than any war. The worst was seeing him lumped in with all the other bodies.” He stopped and sucked in air. “She cried for days and days when I joined the navy. She moved the rest of the family from St. Petersburg to Moscow just to get away from the water. She said it was bewitching her sons.”

Edvard’s skin lightened to the color of slate. His legs and shoulders twitched. His eyes turned empty and glazed; he opened his mouth wide, as though he was going to scream, but only released a faint moan. When he began to kick the wall, Kristof and Boris held down his arms and legs until his body stilled, until his fists uncurled and his head rolled back.

The temperature was dropping. Fyodor’s skin swelled with goosebumps. He tried to remember what it felt like to be outside, under the sun, to watch the movements of the clouds. The other men shook from the cold, their skin faintly blue. Perhaps they would freeze before they suffocated, he thought, like the exiled Soviet prisoners his father used to talk about.

In St. Petersburg, his father had slept in the bedroom, Fyodor on the couch, the cushions thin and tattered. He never had enough blankets during winter and the cold kept him awake at night. His father rarely closed the bedroom door—only when a woman who lived on the ground floor made her monthly visit—and sometimes, in the middle of the night, he would talk about the way things used to be, his voice raspy from cigarettes.

The specters of communism still loomed in St. Petersburg, abandoned Soviet housing and KGB buildings, the basements once used for interrogations and beatings now empty, the concrete facades covered in graffiti, the windows shattered. Fyodor had entered one of the stripped KGB buildings twice in his life: once in his youth and again when he was older, just before leaving for the navy. The second time, he took a flashlight and found a gold tooth in a shadowed, dusty corner.

 

From the cabin, the Admiral supervised the descent of the Scorpios. He watched the screens, monitoring the direction of the underwater cameras; in the light thrown from the machines, the surface waters looked gray. He gave the command and the divers, dressed in wet suits and aligned on the deck, plunged into the sea. Even though their gear was identical, he was able to discern Private Marks from the group, the movements of her limbs possessing a languid femininity.

He was surprised to learn she had been at the base for five years, as he now felt she projected a specialness that should have set her apart from the legions of cadets. He tried to remember if he had observed her from his office window, her shoulders drawn back and her hair neatly arranged, but could not recall such a moment. She had only come to his attention when a lieutenant recommended her for the rescue mission, praising her resolve and skill—more assured, he had said, than many of her peers.

The submarine was far deeper than the divers could swim, nearly two hundred meters down. They would be needed to open the hatch after the Scorpios cut through the cables and the submarine surfaced, he had explained to Lieutenant Vladimir, trying to impress the importance of the sailors being met by voices and human touch.

A Russian officer entered the cabin and stood at attention.

Lieutenant Vladimir nodded.

“Sir, the media has been calling,” he said. “They want to know if you’re still optimistic.”

The Lieutenant looked at the Admiral, who replied, “Yes. Always tell them yes.”

In truth, he had been considering alternate plans, in case the Scorpios were unable to completely free the submarine. If they could lift the vessel a hundred meters or so, the divers could work on the body, but that would require more time. And even if the submarine was quickly disentangled and raised, there was always the chance that the hatch was damaged, like the Kursk.

He watched the screens, the divers hovering in the water, their ink-colored wet suits and the alien look of their masks, the steel limbs of the Scorpios. The cameras had just reached the murky bottom when his dizziness returned. His breathing became shallow; the muscles in his chest tightened. On-screen, the water deepened to jade and the lights from the Scorpios revealed the outline of a capsule resting on the ocean floor, a dark egg.

 

The summer Fyodor’s father vanished for a week, then stumbled through the front door, lips split and eyes blackened, Anya’s mother met a man at work and started spending Friday nights at his apartment. That same summer he and Anya created a secret language and he found two cans of black spray paint in his father’s closet and they snuck out of the apartment building and wandered deep into the city, the cans clinking together in the satchel that hung from his shoulder.

Fyodor heard three long knocks at ten o’clock, signaling her mother’s departure. He crossed the hall and opened the door. The apartment was stark and tidy, the floor polished, the walls and surfaces bare. He followed Anya into her room, furnished with a narrow bed and a small table. He glanced at the ceiling and noticed a light fixture lacking a bulb. A map was taped to the wall, the continents shaded pink, blue, yellow, and green, the borders represented by thin black lines. Different countries had been circled: Uruguay, Egypt, Australia.

“What are these?” he asked, tapping the paper.

“Places I want to go one day.”

He watched her pull on a lavender sweatshirt and brush her hair.

“Come on,” she said, tugging his sleeve. “Let’s go.”

They slunk down the hall and stairs, pausing whenever they heard footsteps or voices nearby. Outside, the air was cool and thin, the buildings dark, the sidewalks quiet. As they approached the city, they could see clusters of light rising from the squares.

A celebration had overtaken the Palace Square, drawing people away from the streets. Fireworks popped and shimmered, bursts of red expanded into huge discs, then faded. Fyodor wondered if his father was moving through the crowd, if Anya’s mother and her boyfriend were watching the sprays of color from the window of his apartment.

When they reached the abandoned building, he unloaded the spray paint from his satchel, shook both the cans, handed one to Anya, then faced the wall. He jerked his arm, haphazardly coloring the dull concrete, propelled by the hiss of the can. Black drops splattered off the surface, dotting his hands and forearms as he made long, snaking lines and messy loops.

He ran out of paint long before Anya and watched her deliberate strokes, her thin arm moving in huge circles. She rotated her wrist from side to side, creating a design that resembled dark waves. She seemed unaware of his gaze, her face tense with concentration, her hair falling forward and obscuring her face.

When she finished, she handed her empty can to Fyodor, who tossed them into a nearby alley littered with overturned garbage bins and rotten food. They stood on the street, Anya’s palm between his shoulder blades, and listened to the snap of the fireworks before linking arms and disappearing into the night.

Fyodor heard a rumbling in the water and opened his eyes. He rolled onto his side and listened. The Lieutenant pressed his head against the wall. Boris and Erik leaned against a control panel. The submarine swayed; the plotting table fell over and slid across the cabin. The floor vibrated; something scraped and banged against the roof.

“They’re coming for us,” Kristof shouted. Fyodor sat up.

When the sawing began, loud as street construction, the  submarine lurched and rattled. A new fear sparked inside him. It didn’t sound like they were being freed but assaulted, and for a moment he believed the submarine was going to be crushed with the sailors inside.

Then he felt the rising.

 

The Admiral slumped into the wall. His eyes watered; the rhythm of his heart turned erratic. None of the other officers noticed, their gazes fixed on the screens and the submarine slowly ascending from the ocean floor. In the artificial light of the Scorpios, the AS-28 glowed green.

When the mini-submarines first reached the AS-28, cables were wrapped around the antenna, a fishing net draped over the nose. Once the Scorpios severed the cables and netting, the submarine bobbed for a moment—causing everyone watching from the ship cabin to gasp—then broke away from the ocean floor.

For the Admiral it wouldn’t be over until the vessel broke through the surface and the sailors boarded the ship, until he shook their hands and shuttled them back to land. When the submarine reached seventy-five meters, the divers materialized on the screens. Private Marks swam closest to the steel pod, her slender legs scissor-kicking through the water, and he wondered if she was married, if she had children, or if all of that still lay ahead.

In the early years of their marriage, he and Marie drove to a lake every Saturday. She preferred to go at dusk, even though the water was cooler. The lake was shaded by weeping willows, their leaves long and straight like curtains. A huge white rock sat at the water’s edge. The Admiral would wade in waist deep, feeling bass and trout brush against his calves, and watch his wife dive off the rock, crack the surface, and emerge, her hair—it was longer then—slicked back, her face full and pink.

After they lost the child, they stopped going to the lake. His wife’s face grew thinner, her features more pronounced. She cut her hair. He thought of his phone call in the Lieutenant’s office, the way the silence had expanded into a gap that words could not bridge, and wished he had tried harder with his marriage, with their need to have a child, with the Kursk.

As the submarine drew closer to the surface, he felt a shuddering between his temples. He lost his ability to think clearly, as though his mind had filled with fog. He collapsed onto the floor, cracking a lens in his glasses and bruising his forehead, a mark that would turn the color of an eggplant, a mark his wife would fold warm washcloths against until it faded into a sickly yellow. Men swarmed, one kneeling and pressing his thumb against the Admiral’s wrist, shaking his shoulder and calling to him. But he was lost to their voices, already imagining a giant fishing net being cast from the sea and swallowing his body, dragging him across the deck and underneath the tide.   

 

The rough movements of the submarine jostled the crew, knocking them against the walls. When the machine became still, several men, including the Lieutenant, cheered and wept. Some of the sailors were kneeling, others standing, their eyes starved and bloodshot, their skin ashen. They heard footsteps above them. They all looked towards the roof.

Fyodor heard a clank, then two more before the hatch opened, drenching his hair and face in rich yellow light. Heat filled the submarine, the smell of the sea. Salty, dry air rushed across his face. Water dripped onto the floor. Arms dangled through the opening; he gazed at them for a moment before grabbing hold. As his eyes adjusted to the light, his body to the warmth, an entire person came into focus, clad in a black wet suit. A diver, still wearing goggles. He looked closer. Sunlight fanned behind her head. A woman.

The men below gripped his waist and legs and pushed him through the hatch. The woman clutched his forearms and pulled. He kept looking at the diver, staring through her goggles, into her pale eyes and the dark half circles underneath. As sunlight engulfed Fyodor, her face shifted. Her nose thinned, her complexion lightened, the arch in her brows sharpened. Her form loosened and moved and when her features hardened again, it was Anya’s face he saw: the red of her tongue and lips, her eyes dark and glistening, her face open and pale as the moon. She whispered to him, in the language of their youth, her voice as soft as the beating of wings, the music of her words drawing him from the sea.

MATT HART RUNNING WITH DAISY, HIS DOG

                                             for Nate Pritts

 

Running with his dog, Matt Hart sucks in

big hunks of frosted air and then forces them back out

like barely visible tufts of pink cotton candy,

 

like apple blossoms twisting in the wind, like

shadowy clouds of flying red ants and

a million or so unfinished projects.

 

He runs as fast as he can (mainly because

he hates to run), then stops to walk and catch,

again, his breath. But Daisy keeps going, going,

 

gone, until jerking at the end of her adjustable lead,

she turns with a look of sympathetic exasperation

saying, C’mon c’mon c’mon, let’s run fast

 

again, grrr! look at that sparrow, that mailbox,

that squirrel, let’s stick our head in this pile of leaves,

this one right here, then fling ’em around, fall down

 

roll over run off with this stick . . . And so it goes.

It’s December and Matt Hart just had another birthday.

36, he thinks, and divides it by three, and doubles it,

 

and starts running again taking a deep breath;

he wonders, as he often does, about the finish line,

the one which is his own yard, his front door, but also

 

the one he’s seen in his mind, never for long and never

for real, but that one, which, when it occurs to him, stops him

in his tracksuit. Sometimes, he thinks Daisy sees it too.

 

Unlike him though, she runs for it as hard as she can,

There it is there it is there it is, let’s go!

But he can’t “let’s go,” can’t get over all

 

the things he doesn’t know: How will it feel

to vanish? Will Daisy get a bone?

Will anybody be waiting there to greet them?

PANEGYRIC FOR SID

The belly.

 

The belly

of the boy.

 

The glowing white

and gray ultrasound

of the head,

and the legs,

and the belly

of the shimmering

sea-horse-sized

boy.

 

The wet feet

and knuckle-ish knees

and the cord

spilling from the womb

still attached

to the heaving

white and then blue,

purple then red,

and then breathing pink belly

of the suddenly

unattached boy.

 

Belly on which

my hand rests

like the giant sculpture

of a hand

in the first photographs

of the milk-mounded,

black-cord-crusted belly

of the bloody,

just-circumcised boy.

 

Boy in the crook of my arm,

in the nest of my neck,

touching my stubbled,

rough cheek

as I lift the white shirt

and kiss the great

sack in your hand

of the belly’s

barely perceptible skin.

 

Boy that I was,

boy that all men

of all shapes

and all beauty and all ugliness

were once,

unwittingly lovely,

unknowingly,

unabashedly

granting the world

the long, smooth,

unassailable proof

there is good

in the bad universe,

good in the weightless

white hair,

good in the joyful, meaningless quiver,

and the smirk and the scowl

and the grin,

good in the sleeping, full,

rising and falling

white belly

of the innocent

blond blur

of the beautiful boy.

THE BED IS A STILL LIFE OF FLYING

She’s driving her bed through an illustrated town,

and the road snaps off like a pencil:

they hover, the bed and the girl in the covers,

and rise into a still life of sweeping through towers

 

and steeples, their shimmering wake like spun sugar.

Even the old daisies turn up.

Fumbling for something to steer by, slow,

or stop with, she’s already falling, shredding

 

the air, the pull on her grave and enormous,

a snug emptiness down there feels like

a still life made for her. The bed

is a still life of pitching seas or dun water

 

just before the wake, still life of ardor unwaning,

still life of waning, still life of driving off bridges

in middle Tennessee, of every long shot at every

dartboard behind greasy doorknobs.

 

The bed is a still life of misunderstanding,

her head pulled back so the face slides off

into the dark between mattress and wall.

Still life of morning and scattershot sounds

 

of hundreds on the boardwalk. She’s the child

shouting stop, stop, covering her ears to the careless

pounding up and down the pier, to boards straining

the tired frame. Still life, the body,

 

dense as an anvil tipped out of clouds.

Still life, light as a feather, a feather, she thinks,

going under again. Crickets work their music

through rain. The bed is a still life

 

of rain, six days and nights unceasing,

still life of floods creeping through soy fields,

water through velvet, violent water,

the sea means no harm and neither does he,

 

this next, other, last one, but she’s

a split hull in the bean field,

shallow breathing is still life

being opened like wooden fruit,

 

being stars inside. The way blue

comes out of his eyes, she’d say

he was a still life of sky,

the way sleeping is a still life of dying,

 

the bed is a still life of flying,

while life waits still,

though mightily disheveled,

for her body to return.

EVIDENCE OF ANGELS

Trying to divine

Something sacred, what the long line

Played out and reeled in

Delivers silvery, wet and flopping

Ungodlike

But alive on a crescent of beach.

 

Of course they disguise themselves—

Fish with wings, weathervanes,

High-flying hawks—

Those “purely spiritual and

Splendid beings”

(This from an Islamic tract)

Who row and spin in their interceding,

 

The sum a practical account:

Crops grow,

Tumors fade, children

Remain whole, the thread doesn’t break.

 

Sublime, sublime

The evidence of angels.

For them, the bamboo

Unfurls its shade, long poles that

Sway and clack

Like socketed pinions in the shimmering air.

Otherwise—

 

Murmurs in the crown,

A sudden cooling like the advent of rain.

IMAGINE THE AIR

Imagine the air were water

Through which we move, we swimmers,

With our upright striding.

Water that we fold about us

For primordial warmth in bath or shower.

Or curtain of rain

Parting the lawn’s astonished children,

A body memory—jumping to wet to dry—

The same recall and fluted bone

That lets us float and spin above the dreamed landscape,

Carefree and fishy in the pearly light.

 

Just so, the stouthearted

Gaze into heaven’s darkness hoping for

Gravity’s rescission. Then

Plummet headfirst into that awesome Abyss.

There’s virtue in such scale,

Being the speck not the squall that

People still talk about: how it

Whipped into a storm that loomed miles over us,

We stargazers, we rocketeers,

Stunned by what we were taking in

 

And taken in by—dust up the hose,

A moment’s thrilling ride, then some other

Nothing at all.

INSTRUCTIONS TO A PORTRAITIST

Add to me a mechanical voice, the smell

of the heavens because they smell of the earth,

and what would hydrogen-react with past forms of us

 

falling. Add to me the removal: let the blood

that follows bead. Look half at me, half at

the long grass color the sky is beginning to have,

 

beauty’s poisonous reptile sleeping in your hand.

If I wear a gemstone, make its thousands laugh.

Don’t think. You must reshape me as the fabrics

 

grow weak. Otherwise, I come out colorless

and afraid. Add to me a long stretch of wetlands

and the dying off of birds. Invent me teeth to

 

bite with, scars to leave, the places you would maim

already in my eyes as atmospheres the edges

whisper, profiles I have let swan, all the children

 

you will later be made to believe in,

their lineless fists and brows of silver lakeness.

The gunshot, the cricket song, irises of steam.

The Robert Watson Literary Prize Story SNARES

Gordon reached across the jumble of plates for the bottle of raki. He’d lost track of the conversation around him. The taverna sat high on a hill, its balcony overlooking the Sea of Marmara, but even at a height the smell of murky water and dead fish reached his nostrils. Citronella candles flickered on the tables. Gordon filled the bottom of his glass with the aniseed liqueur and then splashed in mineral water. He swirled the glass in his hand and watched the mixture cloud. How did it happen? How did two clear liquids combine to form a hazy one?

So many things had become unclear. Three weeks ago he’d been in Missouri. Now here he was in Turkey, drinking late at night, no longer ensnared by thoughts of wife or child.

Earlier in the evening, Gordon had eaten stuffed grape leaves. He’d dipped flat pita bread, still warm to the touch, into an eggplant puree that tasted of wood smoke and garlic. After clearing the dinner plates, the waiter had brought out a handheld vacuum sweeper and, as if he were holding a silver brush and pan, had run the whirring Dustbuster across the tabletop. For dessert, Gordon had been served sweet Turkish coffee, but he’d drunk too far down into his cup and tasted the bitter grit of coffee grounds on his tongue.

Across the table, one of the experienced teachers—Matt, a pockmarked twenty-something—licked the rolling paper and twist-sealed the ends of a joint. He wore a red t-shirt with an emblem of a crescent moon and a single star, the Turkish flag. His biceps were the size of Gordon’s thighs. Matt looked up and met Gordon’s stare. He nodded his head toward a Ziploc full of grass on the table. “I scored it today in Martiköy.”

“Obviously you haven’t watched Midnight Express.”

Matt clicked the wheel on his Zippo. “Dude,” he said in mock-surfer, “you so need to chill out.” He lit the joint, dragged deep, and passed it to Kari, his girlfriend. Gordon felt certain that Matt had swapped place cards in order to sit next to her tonight.

The restaurant had been rented for the night by the school’s director. This was the first party of the year, one she called “a mixer.” In her officious manner, she’d stood at the start of the evening and announced, “I’ve jumbled you up, new teachers and old-hands.” She’d clapped. “Go. Find your places.”

A bit later, a band had played and Gordon had watched the Turkish women on the faculty dance to frenetic Eastern rhythms played on instruments he couldn’t identify—lutes and zithers, perhaps. Unlike the expats, the Turks had dressed for the evening, and many of the women had worn short skirts and tight blouses. As he’d watched their hands snake overhead, he’d felt a sexual frisson, although he knew that they weren’t dancing for him.

Now only this table of diehard drinkers remained—the others, both Turks and expats, had taken the minibuses back to campus. He wasn’t even entirely certain where they were. Somewhere beyond Martiköy. A little village on the coast. How had he missed that last bus? He was drinking too quickly, he thought, and not paying attention. Tierney had a car; he’d said he would drive them all back to campus. Tierney was ass-falling drunk, but Gordon had no choice but to wait for the man to give him a ride.

The waiters were gathered around a television at the corner of the bar where they watched a soundless soccer game, waiting, apparently, for the table of inebriated Americans to go home. The skunk-sweet scent of burning cannabis drifted across the table, and Gordon wondered how long it would be before the waiters smelled it too and called the police. “Don’t you teach civics?” Gordon asked. “And ethics?”

Matt exhaled a lungful of smoke. “I only teach the theory.”

The woman who sat to Gordon’s right was named Sheryl, and she was the new librarian. Like him, this was her first overseas job. She was divorced. Childless. She wore Birkenstocks and a linen dress, and her dark hair, parted in the middle, hung around her face. She reeked of patchouli oil, and her legs were unshaven, but he was willing to overlook those faults because she kept herself fit; because she was attractive in an earthy way. He’d decided that she might be his only reprieve from a year of sexual abstinence. The younger people had already coupled up, and the other women close to his age—thick-ankled and graying—repulsed him.

“Let’s go down to the sea,” Sheryl said suddenly.

Gordon looked down the hill to the sea. It was a steep descent along a narrow dirt path. The trail disappeared into darkness. He doubted they could hike it in their street shoes. “Sure,” he said. “If you like.”

All night he had been filling her glass when it got low, telling jokes, cupping his hand around a match to light her cigarette. He wanted to reach out casually; to wrap his hand around her upper arm and feel under his thumb the scarred circle of her smallpox vaccination, but he was unsure of his timing. Perhaps he was too drunk to make good choices. But then, he thought, that I’m aware of being drunk means I’m not too far gone.

“I love the water,” Kari said. She pinched the joint between thumb and forefinger. “I want to live on the water.”

This was Kari’s first trip outside of the U.S., and earlier in the evening she had told the group stories of her adventure: “On the flight, there was a picture of a little airplane on the television screen that showed you just where you were. We flew over Greenland!”

A cat mewed near Gordon’s feet—a group of strays had gathered on the balcony. Two of the braver ones jumped to a nearby tabletop where leftovers still remained. Others swished their tails around the perimeter of Gordon’s table. They were filthy-looking creatures, their faces puffed with scar tissue.

“I’m going to forage for food,” Matt said. He took an empty plate and began to travel from table to table.

On the other side of Sheryl sat Tierney, a man a bit older than Gordon, a long-term expatriate. A fat poseur, in Gordon’s estimation. Tierney was drinking Turkish gin, spelled on the label with a “c” instead of a “g,” a gut-rot concoction that Gordon couldn’t stomach even when mixed with Schweppes. “You know, last year’s math teacher vanished,” Tierney said. “One day he just didn’t show up for school.”

Gordon realized that he was being addressed. He had heard the story of his predecessor. He knew the man had packed a single suitcase and taken a cab to the airport, leaving the rest of his belongings in his apartment. Gordon had heard the story, and he knew the point of it: Tierney thought that he, too, wouldn’t last out his contract.

Tierney motioned for the joint and Kari handed it across the table. As she leaned forward, Gordon caught sight of her breasts under her loose blouse. The pink of her nipples. “Turkey will do that to you,” Tierney continued.

Matt returned with a plateful of odd appetizers—dolmas, half-eaten pita bread, fried fish. “We’re not just expatriates, you know,” Matt said. He plunked the plate onto the middle of the table. “We’re, like, refugees from reality.”

“Stop trying to scare us,” Gordon said. He reached again for the bottle of raki. “I think we can all cope.” He could tell what these two thought of him—that he was a naïf, a romantic, not tough enough for the expat life. It was ridiculous; as if anyone couldn’t start anew. Gordon sloshed the raki into his glass, surprising himself with the unsteadiness of his aim.

Tierney flicked a bit of fish off the table and the cats leapt upon it, fighting and hissing.

“Does nobody else want to go down to the sea?” Sheryl reached out and took the joint from Tierney. She took a toke and blew smoke out through her nose. Gordon wondered what it would be like with her. Her armpits, he thought, like her legs, would be unshaven.

“You’ve heard there’s a spook on campus?” Tierney seemed to be speaking directly to Sheryl.

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” Kari announced, as if this opinion were a sign of her intellectual integrity. She wasn’t pretty, Gordon decided. Her lips were full and her eyes were large, but her features were overexaggerated.

“He means a spy,” Matt said. “CIA. One of my students says he heard it from his father, who works in intelligence. If you believe that.”

Sheryl held out a forkful of salmon and a large black cat inched toward it. “What would those fuckers be doing at our school?”

“I’m betting on Gordon here,” Tierney continued. “A neo-con James Bond for the new millennium.”

Gordon wondered if he really might be the spook that Tierney was talking about. That would be fitting irony, wouldn’t it? Tierney would have to revise his opinion of Gordon as a Midwestern know-nothing.

Spook wasn’t the right word. He hadn’t been recruited, not exactly. There had been no papers signed, but he had been in contact with a woman who worked for the CIA—Marnie, an old classmate. She had been interested when he told her that he was moving to Turkey, and she’d suggested they talk again. Unlike Matt and Tierney, she valued his opinions about the world.

Suddenly one of the waiters ran from the bar, shouting, clapping his hands, towards their table. Shit, Gordon thought, we’re busted. The waiter must have caught the scent of the marijuana. But no—the man kicked at the cats, which scattered and leapt over the wall of the balcony into the brush, and then he returned to the television at the bar.

Matt pinched out the last of the joint and threw it over the balcony. He picked up the bag of pot from the table and crammed it in his pocket. “The sea,” he said. “To the sea.”

“Let’s take the bottles,” Tierney said. “We’ve paid for them.” He picked up the gin in his left hand and handed the bottle of raki to Gordon. “Be careful with that, Gordon,” he said. “Drinking is the expat’s disease.”

Gordon rose to his feet. He took a step and realized that he would have to concentrate to walk a straight line to the door. As he passed the bar, he noticed their waiter reaching for the telephone.

Tierney stopped in front of Gordon at the exit and turned back to face the waiters. He touched the top of his head. “Allahaısmarladık,” Tierney said.

The waiter covered the receiver with his hand. “Güle, güle,” he replied.

They walked around the back of the taverna to the seaside path.  “What was that you said?” Sheryl asked.

“It’s a kind of goodbye,” Tierney said. “The person leaving says, ‘Allahaısmarladık,’ which means something like ‘God watch over you,’ and the person left behind says, ‘Güle, güle,’ which is ‘smilingly, smilingly.’”

“It sounds like it’s easier to be the person who stays than to be the person who goes,” Sheryl said. “‘Güle, güle’ I can say.”

Staying and going, Gordon thought. Jeanne had stayed; he had gone. The memories sneaked up on him when his guard was down—when he lay in bed waiting for sleep or, like now, when he was drunk.

He had been fixing breakfast when Jeanne had come into the kitchen. “There’s a puddle in the bed,” she’d said. “It doesn’t smell like pee.”

He’d looked at her, not understanding.

“I think my water broke.”

She was only in her twenty-third week. They rushed to the hospital, but the baby was coming too early, far too early. “Not viable,” the doctors said, an ugly term that he still couldn’t shake from his memory. Jeanne went into labor; she seemed to be in shock when the contractions started. “Push,” the nurse shouted. “Think about what you’re doing.” When the baby was born, the nurses wrapped it in a blanket and let Jeanne hold it. A girl. Gordon had held out his pinkie finger to the baby, and she grasped it with her tiny hand. She lived only a few minutes.

Jeanne never recovered. After the baby died, her milk came through, just as if she had a child to feed. It leaked through her bras and T-shirts. It left stains that wouldn’t let her forget the child that they had to bury. Gordon couldn’t escape his vision of the baby, its flesh almost translucent, but Jeanne’s pain was deeper, unfathomably deeper. There was no consoling her.

She started smoking again, buying cartons of unfiltered Chesterfields. Her skin was bad and her complexion sallow. When he suggested therapy, she turned on him, like a cornered animal. “What do you know about it? When have you ever grieved?” He was shocked by her anger; it was as if she was another person.

Gradually he gave up. He wasn’t wanted. He took the dog, and he found a single trailer outside of the city in an area surrounded by woods. It meant a long commute to school, but the rent was cheap, and he liked the feeling of living in the country.

 

The descent to the beach was even steeper than Gordon expected. The path was a soft silt that gave way under his feet; he found himself grabbing at clumps of stiff grass to keep from sliding all the way down the hill. His eyes still hadn’t adjusted to the darkness, and he could barely see what lay in front of him. Gordon took a swig from the bottle and slipped again, spilling some of the raki onto his shirt. He felt the cool alcohol evaporating against his chest.

Sheryl stopped suddenly and Gordon bumped into her. In the darkness, his hand brushed against her ass. “I’m going to kill myself in these,” she said. She took off her sandals and carried them.

“Fuck!” he heard Matt yell. “Fuck, I’ve lost the goddamned bag of pot.” Gordon could hear him shuffling his hands around. “Shit. It cost a fortune.”

Gordon thought again of Sheryl, the momentary contact, the firmness of her flesh under his hand. He imagined them together; would she want to be on top? The thought excited him.

“Found it,” Matt said. “It’s okay. Let’s go.”

Gordon was already so sick of him. Matt, who had lived in Istanbul for one year and hence regarded himself an expert on all things Turkish. And then there was Tierney, with his practiced blasé air. They thought Gordon was a Missouri hick—poorly traveled, poorly read. But he knew about Turkey. He’d read histories and guidebooks; he’d always wanted to travel. After Gordon had gotten the job in Istanbul, he’d watched the opening scene of From Russia with Love on DVD—Bond arriving in Istanbul by rowing through the Basilica Cistern. And when he first arrived in Turkey, he’d stood in the cistern, amid the myriad columns, thinking that he had done it. Istanbul was no longer a pipedream.

The trail flattened out at the bottom. Gordon’s eyes had begun to adjust to the dark. The beach was rocky and littered with plastic bottles and beer cans. At the water’s edge, they picked their way across huge slabs of stone. They sat on the seawall.

“I’m going to roll another one,” Matt said. He took out the bag from his pocket. “Shit. I can’t see if there are seeds in here or not.”

“Let’s chance it,” Kari said.

Gordon took a swig from the bottle of raki. Drunk straight up, the taste of licorice was overpowering. He sat on the rock wall and listened to the waves.

“The cats were pretty,” Kari said. “I’ve hardly seen an animal since I got here. Except lizards.”

“Muslims don’t keep dogs.” Matt flicked open his lighter. His face was briefly illuminated by the flame. “They think they’re unclean.” He blew out the end of the joint, letting it fade to a glow, and then passed it to Tierney.

“You want to see a dog?” Tierney pinched the joint and took a  long toke. “Go to the zoo at Topkapi. They’ve got dogs in cages.”

A flashlight combed the beach some distance down the coast from them. Crabbers, Gordon thought. At night, after the tides, one could spotlight crabs on the beach. They froze in the light as if mesmerized and waited to be netted.

“My dog died last year,” Gordon said. He wondered why he had begun this story. He knew it was a bad idea. “She was an Irish setter, and my wife named her Priscilla, after Priscilla Presley. Our first dog had been named Elvis.”

“Do you know,” Tierney said, “that in Turkish you drink a cigarette instead of smoking it?”

“Then you must be fucking thirsty,” Matt said, reaching for the joint.

Gordon took another drink from the bottle. The story was unlikely to maneuver him any closer to Sheryl’s bed, but still he blundered ahead. “Priscilla’d had pups that I’d given away, but she still had her milk. And then this kitten came into the house. It was just tiny, but Priscilla adopted it. The dog used to nurse the kitten. I’d never seen the likes.”

This would be a good place to stop, he thought, while the story was still cute, but the raki had loosened his tongue. “Then Priscilla disappeared. One day she just didn’t come home.” He paused, hardly able to speak. “And the kitten didn’t understand that all dogs weren’t his friends. He got torn apart. Strays.” Gordon felt the tears coming, but he wouldn’t be caught crying over the story. He took a swig of raki from the bottle and pretended to choke. He held his hand up to his throat.

Sheryl pounded his back. “Can you breathe?”

“Give him some water,” Kari said.

“Fuck that,” Matt said. He flicked the roach into the sea. “If it’s not mixed with raki, he won’t know what to do with it.”

The beam of a flashlight swept across the area where they sat. “Oh shit,” Tierney said.

It was the polis, two young cops. They looked like boys, brothers perhaps, barely old enough to shave. The shorter cop aimed his flashlight from face to face, and Gordon held up his hand against the glare. Bigger brother spoke brusquely in Turkish.  No one answered, and it occurred to Gordon that the others were too drunk, or too fucked up, to be of much use. “Do you speak English?” he asked.

The taller one spoke again. Gordon could recognize only the anger in the voice.

Tierney turned to Matt and whispered, “Itch-day e-thay ot-pay.”

“Speak English,” Matt said. “They don’t.”

“Get rid of the smoke!” Sheryl hissed. “Get a brain.”

“I’ve dropped it. Don’t worry.”

Tierney seemed to be waking up to the situation—he began to speak to the cops in Turkish. The cops pointed up and down the beach, talking loudly. At last Tierney turned back to the group. “Drunk sweep,” he said. “They say we can’t have liquor here.”

Gordon thought back to the empty beer cans littering the beach. “Tell them we didn’t know.”

The shorter cop suddenly grabbed Tierney’s arm and pulled him towards the road. “I don’t think he cares.”

The other policeman gestured for the bottles. He took the gin in one hand and the raki in the other, and then he gestured with the whole of his outstretched arm, pointing up the beach, across the rocks and to the road, where a paddy wagon sat.

Although he’d made a fool of himself by talking about the dog and the kitten, Gordon thought, at least there were a few parts of the story he’d had the sense to censor. He hadn’t told them about moving away from Jeanne. And he hadn’t told them that the dog hadn’t simply disappeared—when Priscilla didn’t come home, he’d gone looking for her.

Gordon had walked through the woods that surrounded his trailer park. “Priscilla! Here girl,” he’d called out, listening to hear her scurrying through the brush towards him. He walked hours before he found her. She looked unmarked, but she was dead. And then he saw the dark wire wrapped around her neck. Strangled to death. Poachers had set a snare under this fence to catch whatever animals might be using the run.

He had called Jeanne, drunk. “Priscilla died,” he’d said.  “Can we talk?”

“Let me get this straight. You’re upset because the dog died.” She’d begun to cry. “Gordon, just leave me the fuck alone.”

It was soon after that Gordon had remembered his dream of Istanbul. He’d realized he was free—no wife, no pets, nothing to tie him down.

 

The paddy wagon smelled of drink and body odor. Three dirty, ragged men, habitual drunks from the look of them, sat glumly on the bench that lined the far side of the van. Gordon took a seat on the bench opposite them. Sheryl and Kari sat next to him, and then Matt and Tierney pushed in.

The taller of the two cops climbed into the wagon and sat opposite Gordon, still holding a bottle in each hand. The short cop climbed into the front of the van, a wire screen separating him from them.

The paddy wagon lurched forward onto the road. The van braked hard and he slid into Sheryl. “Sorry.” He wondered if he might put his arm around her.

“Are they really going to run us in?” Sheryl asked.

“Cool,” Matt said.

Gordon felt horribly, painfully sober. The raki had left him with a licorice slosh in his stomach, but his mind felt clear. The others, incredibly, seemed not to understand their situation.  “Look around at these people,” Gordon said. The hard-looking Turks in the wagon stared at the floor and did not speak. “They’re scared shitless. This is no joke.”

“What?” Kari asked. “Is drinking some kind of hanging crime here?”

The van picked up speed again, and Gordon looked for a handhold. His back bounced against the hard backrest. The van slowed suddenly and then thumped through what seemed to be an open trench. Gordon went airborne.

“These roads are un-fucking-believable,” Kari said. “There are more potholes than road.”

“Once, on the way to Martiköy, I flatted two tires,” Matt said. “The second time I bent a rim.”

Sheryl laughed. “There must be a good Roman road down there somewhere.”

“If it was a Roman road, it’d be straight,” Tierney said. “These things are goddamned goat paths.”

“Can none of you focus on what’s happening?” Gordon said. This trip was bad news—he didn’t know much about the Turkish police, but he had a feeling that there would be no reading of Miranda rights. “We’re being taken to a Turkish jail.”

“Dude, chill,” Matt said. “We were drinking on a beach. They’ll make us pay a fine.”

“Maybe the waiters phoned in the marijuana,” Gordon said. “Have you thought of that? You all weren’t very subtle about it.” Through the front window Gordon could see headlights coming straight at them. The driver made no move to change lanes.

“Do you think we should offer up some baksheesh?” Tierney asked. “I’ve bribed my way out of a speeding ticket but never out of a Black Maria.”

The headlights in the windscreen grew larger and brighter. Gordon gripped the bottom of his bench with both hands. Shit, he thought, we’re going to die before we’re even interrogated.

“Maybe I really should have ditched the pot,” Matt said.

“You don’t still have it,” Kari said. “Do you?”

“Fuck, yes.” Matt patted a noticeable bulge in his front pocket. “I only got it today, and I paid way too much for it.”

The headlights seemed to be right on top of them. “Allah, Allah!” the driver shouted. He twisted the wheel hard. Kari slid off the bench and went to one knee on the floor. Sheryl clutched at Gordon’s arm. He could feel the van begin to tip. The driver jerked the wheel again and the van rocked from side to side before settling on its suspension.

“Holy shit!” Sheryl said.

The taller cop had also toppled to the floor. He knelt now by the wire mesh, still holding their bottles, and shouted at the driver.

“They drive like children in pedal cars,” Matt said. “They don’t steer, they just point their cars in a direction.”

“Lane markers and road signs are just advice here,” Tierney said.

Gordon wanted out of the van. He wanted to go home to his lojman and lie down; he wanted this day to end. So many things had gone wrong, starting with his morning classes. In Kansas City, Gordon’s strength as a teacher had been that he made math fun. Every teacher wanted to be liked—it was the great secret of education—but a math teacher had to work so much harder than most. Gordon had kept a pair of Groucho glasses in his desk. He’d played Jeopardy with the homework answers. Each March, he celebrated Pi Day.

But here, the students weren’t amused by him. They insisted that they had exams to prepare for, pressing him to move faster, but the math was more advanced than anything he’d looked at in years. There were problems in the book he couldn’t solve. Sometimes he’d resorted to asking his best students to show their work on the board and then nodded appreciatively. But today he’d been caught—two of the students had disagreed on a proof and had asked Gordon who was right. “Let me double-check my work and get back to you on Monday,” he’d said lamely.

How the fuck could Matt have held onto the marijuana? What if they were searched at the station?

He thought again of his meeting with Marnie. If the worst happened, if they were jailed, would she have some pull? Could he mention her name to the embassy? Perhaps that would somehow compromise her.

The paddy wagon seemed to have reached a town. Gordon could see streetlamps overhead, and the driver turned down one road and then another. At last they stopped. The short cop opened the back door, and the Turkish men began to pile out. The other policeman motioned for Gordon to follow.

Outside the van, the night air was cool. “Where are we?” Sheryl asked.

The Turks began to single file into the police station, as if it was a drill they knew well.

Tierney glanced up and down the street. “Welcome back to Martiköy, Gordon.”

 

During Gordon’s first days in Turkey, the school had organized a bus to Martiköy so the new teachers could do their shopping. The Saturday market had sprawled throughout the city, and Gordon had left the group to explore. Vendors’ tables filled every available space on the sidewalks. In America, food was wrapped, sanitized, sealed; here, huge bags of spices sat open, whole sacks of saffron, stick cinnamon, and cumin. Pigeons pecked at sunflower seeds until they were shooed away. Gordon went a block further and the smell of the fishmongers’ stalls assaulted him.

Women haggled over prices and men walked arm in arm.  Despite the heat, the men wore long trousers; some had jackets and woolen skullcaps. Many of the women wore headscarves and their bodies were made shapeless by long raincoats. He saw one woman dressed head-to-toe in black being led by a man—no slit was cut into the veil for her eyes. Gordon had worn shorts, and a white-haired man slapped his cane into Gordon’s bare legs as he passed.

He tried to make his way back to where the bus had parked. Before setting out, he had picked out a merchant selling huge stainless steel pots as a landmark, but since then he had come across others selling identical goods. Was this mosque the same one that the van had parked near? The world had become a mass of the unfamiliar. Surely this was what it was like to grow old, to become senile and confused. He felt nauseated as he realized that the bus had surely departed. At last he found a taxi driver who understood where he wanted to go. “Twenty dollar,” the driver said. Gordon nodded. He was probably being ripped off, but what else could he do?

When the taxi had pulled up at his lojman, a group of teachers sat on folding chairs in his lawn. They’d cheered as he got out of the taxi. “Gordon! Gordon!” Matt had handed him a can of Efes beer, and Tierney had said, “We always have a bet at the start of the year—who’ll be the first person to get lost.” He’d motioned to the others. “We’re your backers.”

 

Inside the police station, the group was herded into a dimly lit room filled with Turkish men, picked up, apparently, on earlier sweeps. The men stood quietly, heads bowed. Many held their hands protectively in front of their genitals.

“This isn’t looking so good,” Tierney said.

No shit, Gordon thought. Already he was wondering how he would explain this to the headmistress. In the country for less than a month and already busted. Matt with his fucking marijuana. Were they allowed to call the embassy? “I should tell you something,” he heard himself say, but then he stopped and began again, whispering. “If this gets bad, I may be able to help. Before I came here, I talked to a CIA agent,” he said.  “An old girlfriend. She says she works for AID, but everyone knows it’s some kind of light cover. When I told her I was coming here, she asked me to keep my eyes open. I can contact her.”

The others stared at him for a long moment without speaking. At last Tierney said, “So you think you’re the spook?” There was a laugh in his voice.

“Maybe,” Gordon said. “I don’t know.”

“Haven’t you just blown your cover?” Kari asked.

“Dude, I never took you for a snitch.”

Gordon studied Matt. “What do you mean?”

“A snitch. A fink. A narc.” He patted at his bulging pocket. “Who do you think she wants you to spy on? It’s not like you speak Turkish. You don’t have access to secrets. If she wants you to spy on anybody, it must be on us. The other expats.”

“Maybe she was just talking,” Sheryl said. “‘Keep your eyes open.’ I mean, it doesn’t sound like you’re on the payroll.”

This wasn’t the reaction Gordon had expected. He’d pictured himself as a quiet hero, helping with national security, fighting terrorism. He’d thought they might be grateful for his help. He’d thought Sheryl might be impressed.

The two young cops sprawled in folding chairs, smoking strong cigarettes. The room was quiet. At last, a mustachioed policeman entered. He looked around at the silent group. When his stare fell on Gordon and the others, he called out in Turkish. The brothers sprung to their feet. They dropped their cigarettes on the floor.

“We’re foreigners,” Tierney said. “Yabanciyiz.”

The police officer spoke in harsh tones to the two young cops, who looked away. After a moment, he walked up to Gordon’s group, motioning with his hand. “Gelin,” he said. “Come.” He led them out of the room. At the exit, he pushed the door open and wagged his finger in their faces. “Only a drunk on bar,” he said. “Never in beach.”

“Right,” Matt said. “On bar only.”

“We understand,” Gordon said. Matt, the idiot, was asking to be searched. “It won’t happen again.”

Sheryl sniggered, at what Gordon was unsure.

“Iyi Geceler,” the policeman said. “Goody night.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Gordon said. He walked down the street and the others followed, laughing. At the corner, he heard footsteps behind him. “Bakarmisiniz?” the tall policeman called. “Raki. Cin.” He handed the bottles to Tierney and jogged back towards the station.

Maybe Tierney’s right, Gordon thought; maybe there is some kind of madness to this place. Gordon had arrived thinking only of the adventure, but these past days had been harder than he had expected. Chaotic.

Already he was sick of living out of a suitcase. He’d brought only a few days’ worth of clothes; he had nothing for the colder weather that was approaching. In his shipment there was a trench coat that he’d bought in Kansas City, a Humphrey Bogart kind of coat, replete with epaulets and belt. He’d chosen it not only for its practicality but also because he associated it with foreign correspondents and spies. But his shipment had never arrived. He was using a jam jar as a drinking glass. He had to wash out his few clothes in the kitchen sink.

Yesterday, Gordon had left school early and caught a ride into Istanbul. He’d gone to the shipping agent’s office with the belief that he might get a firm answer if he spoke to the man face-to-face. “Very good news,” the agent had enthused. He was sweaty and beer-bellied. “We are only waiting for your shipment to clear customs. Perhaps tomorrow.”

Gordon felt his jaw tighten. It was the same thing he’d heard every day for the past weeks. Always tomorrow, Gordon thought. “Does a bribe need to be paid?”

“We take care of baksheesh,” the man said. “Don’t worry. Soon. Perhaps tomorrow.”

“So I can call you tomorrow?”

“Yes, yes, call. But perhaps not tomorrow. Perhaps tomorrow tomorrow. We will let you know.”

And then Gordon had begun the trek back to school. Without a car, the journey took hours: a ferry ride across the Bosporus, a crowded commuter train, and then a minibus. Near the ferry station he’d been surrounded by a pack of grubby shoeshine boys calling out “Shiney? Shiney?” Gordon had waved them off. “Suede,” he said. “Don’t shine.” But one of the kids daubed brown polish on the leather regardless. Gordon had shoved him, perhaps harder than he’d intended, and the boy had tumbled face first, his shoeshine equipment clattering on the cobblestones. Gordon had turned quickly and walked away, but the boy had followed him, reciting all the English words of abuse that he had heard others hurl at him, words he probably didn’t fully understand: “Piss off! Bugger off you little prick. Go to hell.”

 

Gordon looked down the street. No traffic. No pedestrians.

“We’re miles from my car,” Tierney said.

Most of the shop windows were dark or shuttered, but opposite them, a window display of headless mannequins dressed in puffy wedding gowns glowed violet-blue under an ultraviolet light.

“We’re not going to find a taxi now,” Matt said. “We might as well wait until morning.”

“What a window dressing,” Sheryl said. “It certainly makes me want to get married.”

Tierney held up the half-empty bottles. “Let’s have a drink.” He sat on a park bench facing the bridal gowns.

“I just want to get home,” Gordon said. “I want to find my bed.” His wave of sobriety had passed. He realized that he would feel very, very sick tomorrow. Or perhaps it was today.

Sheryl slumped onto the bench next to Tierney. She held her head in her hands. Gordon hesitated a moment, and then sat next to her. Kari and Matt glanced at one another and folded themselves up cross-legged on the sidewalk, facing the bench. Tierney placed the two bottles on the ground in the middle of the group. “Şerefe,” he said.

Gordon leaned forward for the raki. As he reached for it, his hand outstretched, he watched the liqueur begin to slosh inside the bottle. The entire bottle, he realized, was vibrating. He sat back and put his hand against the wooden bench; it too trembled. And then in the shop window the black lights flickered off; the wedding dresses vanished. The streetlights, too, faded to a glow and then went out.

As suddenly as it began, the vibration ceased. He became aware of the din of the street. Sirens wailed and horns honked, each with its own steady cadence. Car headlights flashed on and off along the otherwise dark street.

“Holy fuck!” Sheryl shouted above the hubbub. “Was that an earthquake?”

“A little temblor,” Tierney shouted in response. “We get them all the time.”

One by one the alarms began to quiet. “I’m so freaked,” Kari said.

Matt said, “Don’t worry. It’s over. It was nothing.”

“I don’t know what happened to the power, though,” Tierney said. “That’s unusual.”

As Gordon’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, he realized that Matt and Kari had begun to make out. He could just see Matt’s hand moving under her blouse. He couldn’t stop himself from watching.

The lights flickered back on in the shop window, and Matt and Kari separated. Gradually, the overhead lamps began again to glow. Tierney picked up the gin and took a swig. “You see? All’s well that ends well.”

“Does it end well?” Sheryl asked. “Is this a major fault zone? I worried about lots of things before I took this job—terrorism, hospitals, the blood supply. I didn’t think about earthquakes.”

Tierney shrugged. “Someday there’ll be a big one, and then Istanbul will be screwed. A lot of these buildings will collapse like sandcastles. I’ve seen trucks hauling used rebar—they wait for the concrete to set a little, and then they pull out the rods to use somewhere else.”

Gordon reached out his hand to touch Sheryl’s arm. He meant it as a gesture of reassurance, but she stiffened. “What are you doing?” she asked.

He had failed so miserably this evening to impress her. He reached for the bottle of raki and took a pull. He felt suddenly dizzy. Why was he so unable to make a connection with this group?

No matter where you go, there you are, he thought. There would be no secret dockings in the Basilica Cistern. He wasn’t James Bond, only a would-be snitch. He wasn’t free, only alone. No one gave a good goddamn about him.

Matt and Kari engaged in another embrace, no longer worried about an audience. She moaned softly. “I’m going for a walk,” Gordon said.

He put the bottle on the ground and rose unsteadily to his feet. The sidewalk seemed to move with him, and he stumbled forward. He made his way across the street. In front of the bridal shop he stopped and studied the oddly-glowing dresses.

Gordon thought again of his dog lying dead under the fence. The snare, a cable with a locking slide, had been designed to tighten as the animal struggled. It gave back no slack. If Priscilla had stayed still, if she hadn’t tried to fight her way out, she might have lain there until he’d found her. Instead, she had twisted and turned, pulled against the wire, until it strangled her to death.

Gordon tried to force the image from his mind. He leaned forward and rested his head against the shop window. From behind him, across the street, he heard again the clink of bottles. A burst of laughter. Gordon lifted his head and turned to face the group.

The Robert Watson Literary Prize Poem WHERE YOU FELL

The snow held your shape like bedding,

the shadow of your hand over your head ruined

by the feet of the men who found and carried you.

 

I stayed in your house for a day, following your habits,

coatless to the shed and back. I finished the wood

you’d begun to split, feeling the heft of the axe

 

as you felt it. We are always becoming what

we lose. They will say they saw a fox whisper

into your ear. They will never come back.

 

I pawed the snow to form your hand again,

your sleeping profile. Then I pressed my face

to the mold of your cheek and I became you.

DENIAL

It’s not

the kiss of coffee

or the glancing touch of feathered down,

or first sunlight shared

like sections of the newspaper.

 

Yes, I’m through with that.

 

It’s not

about the sweet kingdom of cantaloupe,

or the curvature

along your foot or shoulder bone.

Our planet is flat,

 

And we shall never go to the moon.

 

It is

exactly what it is not.

The skillet sings a backward tune,

the toast unburns

and the yolk becomes it singular self

once again.

 

Please, pass the salt

 

for the wound.

Serve me up

all the reasons why we should,

and I will make an entire meal

out of veto and

 

Let’s not.