Exiles (9 page)

“It’s this,” Aaronson said. “I’ve got to go check out some of our supplies.”

“Supplies of what?”

“There’s sort of a pipeline,” Tracy said, “a network that helps guys get papers and cross borders, guides them into exile, settles them in. For security, no one knows more than one contact, one link on the chain. We’re the end of the line, of course. The welcoming committee.”

“And the filter at the end of the pipe,” Aaronson said. “We keep out impure elements.”

“He’s got to go down to the border,” the Worm said, “to make sure that we don’t take in guys who would cut a deal with the man.”

“Right,” Aaronson said. “It would be extremely harmful if we took in the wrong kind. We don’t want anyone who would go back to the army and talk, in exchange for short time. So I have to screen anyone who’s thinking about settling in Uppsala because there’s always a danger that the army might have tapped into the pipe.”

“What do you mean?” Spiegel asked.

“I mean they might send us a fake deserter. Send us a spy. Just to fuck us up.”

“That’s why everyone’s so suspicious of newcomers,” Tracy said.

“Nothing personal,” Zeke added.

“I’m going to the border to deal with the latest deliveries. Check out the merchandise.”

“Shipping and receiving,” said the Worm.

“Quality control,” Reston said.

“Well,” Spiegel said. “I’ll do what I can. That’s why I came here.”

“That’s good,” Tracy said. “That’s why we’re all here.”

“So maybe we ought to adjourn this meeting,” Zeke said, shifting his great bulk about on the spindly chair, “and reconvene in the
puben
.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Reston said.

“I mean let’s go get a couple of beers.”

“No. I mean the
puben
.”

“
Puben
means pub, in Swedish,” said the Worm.

“
Puben
means
the
Pub. The
en
ending means
the,
” Reston said.

“So what?”

“So you can’t call it
the Puben.
That’s like calling it
the the pub.
”

“If you don’t shut the the fuck up I’m going to hit you in the the nose.”

“Okay, guys,” Tracy said. “Take a stack of these flyers, each of you, on the way out, all right?”

The Worm, Reston, and Zeke fumbled with their caps and wool scarves.

“I don’t know, man,” Zeke said. “Last time I handed out flyers some pig comes up to me and says something I don’t understand, and then he grabs me by the arm and shoves me right off that corner. I’m saying, hey, don’t a guy have a right to hand these out? Ain’t this a free country?”

“Well, it ain’t a free country,” Reston said.

“That’s true,” Aaronson said. “You need a permit for everything. Even for a demonstration.”

“Can you imagine that, having to sign up for the right to protest?”

“But man,” the Worm said, “it’s the way they look at you. It’s like they’re looking right through you.”

“Not me, man,” Zeke said. “Most of them ain’t never seen a black man up close before, except on TV. And they’re like too polite to stare, except the children. They want to touch me, see if black skin feels the same. Like I’m in some kind of petting zoo.”

“Kids always look at my long hair,” the Worm said. “I guess they’ve never seen a guy with a ponytail.”

“Yeah, well you could cut off your hair. Not much I can do about my color.”

“Ain’t no one saying you should, man.”

“I’ll catch up with you guys later,” Tracy said, as Zeke, Reston, and the Worm shuffled out of the meeting room, trailing streams of cigarette smoke. They were off to spend their last few hoarded kroner on mugs of thin beer. Spiegel imagined them, shoulder to shoulder, gazing into the pools of amber, hoping to discern in the liquescence a muted image of a better life.

Aaronson led Spiegel into a little office he had fixed up in what had once been a storage closet. Stacked against the concrete wall were some packing crates of glassware and teapots. Next to the crates, Aaronson had set up a folding chair and a card table. He had draped an American flag over the table, which he was using as a desk.

“Nice lamp,” Spiegel said.

Aaronson flicked on the handsome gooseneck that was clamped to one of the folds in the cloth. “There are advantages to renting space beneath an electronics store,” he said. “All kinds of things pass through the warehouse, and sometimes they get, uh, damaged during transport. Maybe I can manage to procure you something.”

“I don’t know that I really need a lamp.”

“Well, anything.”

“I was a little surprised that you guys meet in a warehouse. I’d have thought you guys would want someplace more accessible.”

“Why would we want that?”

“So people could be aware of the American community. They could drop in, for information, for conversation.”

“No, that’s not really what we want. We’d rather go about our business undisturbed.”

“But here you have to pay rent.”

“It’s a very reasonable rate. The owners are sympathizers. And we do some favors for them, too.”

“Not in the janitorial area, however,” Spiegel said. He looked around, warily, at the accumulated debris and dust and crud.

“No, more in the area of shipping and receiving.” Aaronson laughed, and sat at the desk. “So, what do you think?” he asked.

“It’s okay for starters,” Spiegel said. He sat down on one of the crates. “Maybe someday you’ll have a room with a view.”

“I don’t mean the office,” Aaronson said. “I mean the guys, the meeting.”

“I think they want to learn Swedish,” Spiegel said.

“You know what these guys really want?” Aaronson said. “They don’t want jobs, housing, welfare.” He leaned across the table and spoke quietly. “They want to get laid.”

“Well, you’ve got an old lady, so I don’t know that you’re one to judge—”

“I’m not judging. I’m just telling you all their complaints will go away once they get their rocks off.”

“So what are you wasting your time for? Why don’t you just start a dating service?”

Aaronson laughed. “You’ve got to realize, once these guys start getting it, they’re no good to the movement anymore. They’ll lose interest.”

“You mean, they’ll be happy.”

“Contented cows,” Aaronson said. “Ready to settle down beside a meadow and chew their cud.”

“I think they deserve that, after all they’ve given up, and all they’ve risked. Look at the lives they’ve come from,” Spiegel said. “There’s nothing for them to go back to, even if there were a general amnesty. Here, they’re free.”

“Maybe,” Aaronson said. “Until the government decides there’s too many of us, that we’re expensive and dangerous, that we corrupt the morals of Swedish youth. That we poison the air with our smoke and the gene pools with our dicks.”

“What are you talking about?” Spiegel asked.

Aaronson explained that the Swedes had become wary of Americans and uneasy in their presence. The typical American on the street these days was no longer a college student with a backpack asking for directions to the
djurpark
. The Americans they saw these days were the high-school dropouts with tobacco-stained fingers and bloodshot eyes, trying to cadge a few kroner for a cup of coffee and a sweet roll. As a result, the sicknesses that had begun to infect Swedish society—guns, drugs, sexual disease—were associated in the public mind with the new immigrants, the refugees, and it would not be long before the fledgling right-wing parties began to exploit the nascent anti-American feelings to their political advantage.

“We’re not citizens, you know,” Aaronson said. “We live here on temporary residence permits. The official policy could change, and the permits could be pulled so fast—” He snapped his fingers. “Then where would we be?”

“Looking for a home?” Spiegel said. “On the road again?”

“But you know that’s not going to happen.” It was Tracy. She stood in the office doorway, clutching a batch of folded papers. From Spiegel’s vantage, a large, shiny visage of Mao on a poster pinned to the far wall seemed to be watching them from over Tracy’s shoulder. “There’s no way they would pull our permits, unless we did something really fucked-up.”

“Like what, Tracy?” Aaronson said. “Who’s to define
fucked-up?
In this country, littering might be considered a capital offense. Maybe they could deport us for smoking in the wrong railway car.”

“The pigs are the same all over the world,” Tracy said, as she sat down on one of the crates. “I hope you weren’t too put off by the guys,” she said to Spiegel.

“They don’t trust strangers. And rightfully,” Aaronson said.

“It’s okay,” Spiegel said. “Neither would I, in their shoes. I mean, hell, I could be—”

“A spy. An infiltrator,” Tracy said, ticking off the possibilities on her fingers. “Someone sent by the army, the criminal intelligence division, to file reports, to maybe try to talk a few of the deserters into renouncing the cause—”

“But at least you guys know that I’m clean.”

“Sure,” Tracy said. “That’s why we wanted to introduce you to the steering committee. So that they would understand who you are, in case anything happens.”

“You mean while I’m traveling,” Spiegel said.

Tracy and Aaronson looked at each other, puzzled. “What makes you think you’re going to be traveling?” Aaronson asked.

Spiegel leaned back against a heating pipe, and he smiled. “I figured it out. You’re not going down to check out the new recruits,” he said to Aaronson. “You can’t risk crossing the border. That’s why you wanted me to come to Uppsala. I look enough like you, so I can travel for you, I can travel
as
you, while you lay low back here, keeping an eye on things. That way, if I get picked up, everything’s cool—at least for you.”

“Hmm. Iris told us you were really smart, a quick study,” Aaronson said. “And that’s good. You figured out a really good plan, but you figured it wrong.”

“I did?” Spiegel wasn’t sure if he had been complimented or slyly insulted and put in his place.

“Or I guess I’d say you got it exactly right, but backwards. Like a mirror image,” Tracy said.

“I’m the one who’s going to travel,” Aaronson said. “But I’m going to travel as you. There’s a drop-off point in Denmark, and I have to go down there to meet some deserters who’ve just gone over the wall and get them safely into Sweden, without attracting the attention of the military police.”

“I see,” Spiegel said. “And you want to travel as me—”

“Because your papers are clean. And if I let my hair grow—"

“You’ll look just like me.”

“So if I’m stopped or checked,” Aaronson said, “everything will wash.”

“Will you give him your passport?” Tracy asked. She leaned toward Spiegel and placed her hand on his arm. “I know it could be risky for you, to be without papers.”

“It’s for the movement,” Aaronson said. “We all have to take some risks. Think of the danger the deserters have braved. Anything we do to help them out is easy, by comparison.”

“You’ve got to decide,” Tracy said.

“I have decided,” Spiegel said. “I decided before I left the States. I’d do whatever I could, whatever I had to do—”

“That’s good,” Tracy interjected. “That’s great!” She stepped over to Spiegel and embraced him. On her neck he could smell a trace of mimeo ink—the perfume of the left. Spiegel felt a tenseness, an urgency in her embrace, however, as if she were eager to move him along before he changed his mind and pulled out of the deal. He let Tracy go and turned to face Aaronson. It seemed hard to believe that they had met only twice, for Spiegel felt that he had been living, for the past year, within Aaronson’s gravitational field. Before, he had thought of himself as a meteor, adrift in space, which had been pulled into Aaronson’s orbit. Now that they had met, he had begun to see that they had both been adrift, that maybe—from Aaronson’s point of view—Spiegel had been the stronger force. Perhaps the truth was that they were more like double stars, spinning madly about an invisible axis, until either one of them would be cast off or they would converge at the center, obliterating each other in an all-consuming fire.

“I’ll stop by tomorrow with the papers,” Spiegel said.

“No,” Aaronson said. “I need them as soon as possible. I have to leave right away, maybe tonight.”

“Then I’ll come down to your place tonight.”

“I’d rather that we weren’t seen together just now,” Aaronson said slowly, measuring each word. “I don’t want to attract too much attention to my movements. Why don’t you just give the passport to Tracy? She can give you a ride home.”

“Sure,” Spiegel said. He set his hand on Aaronson’s desk. His palm just about covered one of the fifty stars. “I understand where you’re coming from,” he said. “You’re scared.”

Aaronson looked up at Spiegel. “I’m scared of what?” Aaronson said.

“I mean, you’re moving into the ring of fire. You could stay here, in complete safety, doing your work. And it’s good work, important stuff, helping to establish the American community in Uppsala. Nobody would get on your case if you just hibernated in Sweden, building a new life for yourself, waiting out the war.”

“No, I’m not scared,” Aaronson said. He stood, and stepped out from behind his desk. “I mean, what’s the worst that can happen? They arrest me, deport me, send me to prison? Sweden’s a prison, too.”

“Prison’s the least of it,” Spiegel said. “It’s one thing to help the deserters once they’re here. But bringing them in, underground-railroad stuff—that could be treason, in time of war. That’s a capital crime, man.”

“You have to wish me luck then.” Aaronson grabbed Spiegel’s palm, and they gripped hands in a strong, brotherly soul handshake, elbows crooked at right angles, joined fists upraised in the spirit of pride and defiance.

Spiegel thought, despite Aaronson’s assurances, that he could see in his eyes and feel in the touch of his hand a slight trembling of fear, a nervous sidelong look of uncertainty. He was beginning to understand how strong Aaronson had to be to keep his doubts and fears hidden from view. As they said good-bye, Aaronson’s features were set in a friendly smile, but Spiegel had the feeling that Aaronson’s fixed expression was a facade, a mask covering his trepidation.