The Refugee Sentinel (18 page)

Mitko entered the lobby of the Seattle ULE embassy. His hands swam through traffic like live dolphins and his head, cocked at an angle, seemed to examine something peculiar on the ceiling that no one else could see.

Sarah met him at security and escorted him to a private conference room. “Take a seat, Mr. Benjamin,” she said.

“I imagine the table is a foot ahead, Dr. Perkins.” Without her confirmation, he swiped at the space in front, his palm grabbing the empty chair and sat, facing her, as confident as a seeing person.

“You’re quite the pianist, I hear,” she said.

“I’ve played some in my past.”

“Forty-four years behind the piano qualifies as more than some, in my book.”

“You flatter me, Doctor. How may I help?”

“My good manners compel me to ask if you’d like a drink, first.”

“A glass of water, please.”

Sarah walked away to a room corner then returned. “The paper cup is a few inches away from your left hand,” she said. “Straight ahead.”

“You’re a fast learner.”

“Speaking of your hands, who did this to you?”

“I had a minor accident at work. I’d rather we focus about why you called me here.”

“OK… My eight-year-old will compete in the ULE Classical Prodigy next month.”

He puckered his lips, inhaling a whistle. “The Prodigy. You must be proud.”

“I am and I’d like you to train her.”

“A month is not enough to prepare.”

“She’s played since four and a half –”

“You realize they’ll blow her away,” he said. “No disrespect.”

“—under the supervision of a certified Prodigy tutor in DC.”

“You two have travelled a long way from DC. And I’m sure you realized, your move would disrupt your daughter’s preparations.”

“Us moving to Seattle couldn’t be helped,” she said, “and isn’t as fatal as you make it sound. Yana is a gifted young pianist in need of a replacement tutor.”

“Did you move here because of Defiance Day?”

“Are you in, or are you out?”

“Sorry. I was trying to get context.”

“You and sixteen other applicants we’re interviewing…”

“Where will I tutor her?”

“In this embassy... every single day. A car will shuttle you from here to downtown and back.”

“Will my condition impact your final decision?”

“Your condition?”

“I’m blind and six of my fingers are broken.”

“No. But your fee will. How much are you charging per hour?”

“If I do this, Dr. Perkins, I’ll do it for your daughter, not for money. May I meet her, please?”

“I’ll get her from the other room and have you two meet one-on-one,” she said. “You should start getting used to each other’s company.” Sarah left and in a minute a little voice flew to Mitko like a verse from a lullaby. “Good afternoon, Mr. Benjamin.”

He waved without standing up. “Don’t be frightened, dear, but you should know that my eyes can’t see.”

“That must be difficult.”

“It’s not so bad. I can see with my heart, instead.”

“You can? Will you teach me how?”

“Only if you promise you’ll keep it a secret. Then I’ll teach you the piano too.”

The girl sounded like a pout on a face. “I already know how to play the piano.”

“You’re right, I misspoke.” He smiled. “I can help you prepare for your piano competition while I teach you to see with your heart.”

“And I promise I won’t tell anyone. Deal?”

“Eight years old and already a negotiator. If I didn’t know better, I’d guess you didn’t like playing much.”

“I like playing for fun; I don’t like competitions.”

“Your preparation will be fun, I promise. Please, go get your Mom, now.”

Yana skipped toward the door. It closed and when it opened again, Mitko heard Sarah standing in it. “Do we have a deal?” she said.

“We can start with an assessment of how she’ll do at the event. A couple of favorite pieces, followed by her competitive composition.”

“We’re beyond assessments, Mr. Benjamin. I want her to win the Prodigy.”

“I’ll give your daughter my best, Doctor.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Benjamin. We’ll see you tomorrow for your initial class with her.”

For the first time in a long while, Mitko meant it when he replied, “The pleasure was mine.”

“Not bad,” Mitko whispered after a moment of contemplation. Yana had just finished Nocturne.

“It’s the first one I ever learned.” She clapped hands. “I’m glad you liked it.”

“I did. And you? Why do you like the Nocturne?”

“I imagine spending time with my family when I play it.”

“Tell me about it, please.”

“Mom and Dad are together and I have a brother, too. Dad’s teaching us to ski and Mom’s fixing dinner in a lodge at the base of the hill. A foot of snow covers the ground. I walk in the middle. My brother pokes me with a stick and asks me to pass it forward, but I don’t poke Dad because I love him. It gets dark by the time we get back to the lodge. Before we enter, Mom gives us each a cup of hot chocolate to warm our hands.” Yana sounded like she was smiling. “Then we go inside and throw our frozen clothes in the laundry and bundle up in thick blankets in our jammies. Mom has started a fire. I sit close, my head on her lap, because I’ve missed her during the day. Dad plays Nocturne on his guitar. Then we eat and Dad stops playing from time to time to take a bite. We’re all safe and we talk and we’re together.”

“Have you seen snow before?”

“I haven’t,” she said. “I imagine it’s beautiful.”

“I don’t remember how it looked anymore, but it felt warm to the tongue. When you see snow for the first time you should try to catch a snowflake with your tongue. I’ll be with you then.”

“Deal,” she sounded like a cat about to pounce on a sparrow. “But how do you mean you’ll be with me? Will we catch the snowflakes together?”

Mitko pinched Yana’s nose as if he could see it where it was, all along. “You’re a natural at seeing with the heart, kid. Tell your Mom I want you to play Nocturne at The Prodigy.”

“You’re the best teacher I’ve ever had,” she said then, as loud as a fireworks show, she left to give her mother the news.

Alone, Mitko walked to the water fountain in the corner of the room and drank. For some reason, Yana’s company had prompted him to think of Colton. The eight-year-old student’s joy next to the agony of Colton’s severed sacrifice – two polar opposites that emerged side by side in his mind. Colton’s daughter was called Yana, too. Could the two girls be the same person? Mitko would never forget touching Colton’s tears, warm and vast and born by despair so unbeatable, it forced self-mutilation, when nothing else would do.

Then the girl... hidden behind a guarded gate. He had met her protective mother, but never the Dad. Wasn’t it in the job description of fathers to look after their daughters? And if Colton were linked to the girl, as crazy as it sounded, why wasn’t he with them? Why cripple himself and play hide-and-seek with a one-eared assassin, rather than hide in the ULE safe haven? What kind of man gave his hand for his daughter but refused basic help?

Mitko took a drink from the paper cup, his forehead coated with sweat. A connection between Colton and his student bordered on lunacy, but as much as logic mocked at his speculation, the inkling refused to go away. Who else could know? No one, that much was certain. Not that he’d share his intuition with either of the two or anyone else. He just wanted to help soothe their anguish, if he could.

The table shook and his paper cup fell over. The water inside spilled on the lacquered surface, Sarah had walked in. “Chopin?” she said. “Do you know how many contestants do Chopin each year? Every kid not inflicted by cerebral palsy will play the Nocturne.”

“That’s where her heart is,” he said. Under his fingers, the spilled puddles merged in a larger one.

“Then teach her heart to be in Boulez’s Second Sonata. She’s practiced it for eight months.”

“Yana’s Nocturne technique is peculiar in ways I haven’t heard in other pianists. And I mean peculiar in a good way.”

“Look, Boulez is a whale to play and my daughter’s performance is imperfect, I get it. But changing the piece is… unthinkable.”

“I agree that if she does a half-decent job on Boulez at her age, she’ll impress the judges. She might even win the Prodigy. But –”

“What else is there?”

“If you love a flower, Sarah, you don't pick it up. It will die and cease to be what you love. If you love a flower, you let it be. Love is not about possession.
”

She applauded, one palm clapping the other. “Spare me the poetry. I’m a bit tied up fighting off Armageddon.”

“What I’m saying is –“

“If you won’t teach her Boulez, we will find someone else who will, Mr. Benjamin.”

“Ask her what she –“

“And that is that.”

With a short nod, Mitko went to the door, fumbled for the handle and left the room.

Wednesday night, before meeting Yana for the second time, Colton had slept for no more than three hours. He boarded the six-am bus the next morning and sat on two seats in a single motion. Today, he wasn’t interested in sitting next to anyone else other than Yana.

The daughter of his past had been an abstract image, evoking in him a ferocious amount of guilt. She’d been an icon he prayed to each night before falling asleep. Then they met and the encounter grounded his love in reality. Yana was real and seeing her, for the first time in seven years, had wiped away the doubt if his Sacrifice vote had been worth it. The bus driver announced the ULE embassy stop and Colton stood and hugged a rail to keep steady. With his good hand, he straightened the front and back of his pants and as the doors sighed open, ran toward the meeting he couldn’t stop thinking about since their last time together.

By the time he made it to the conference meeting room she had beaten him there. She was wearing a green backpack. He paused to catch his breath; she didn’t need to know he had run up the stairs because the elevator looked too slow.

“Did you sleep well?” he said.

“Mom says I give Sleeping Beauty a run for her crown. You need a naval battle to wake me, she says.” Yana adjusted her backpack. “Why do you ask?”

“I remember otherwise when you were little.” He noticed the fingers of his good hand drumming against the table’s ledge like unconscious living drum sticks and stuffed them in his pocket. “You were, by far, the worst sleeper in the neighborhood.”

“How do you know what I was like? I don’t remember you.”

“It’s the biggest mistake of my life. The one mistake beyond redemption.” Colton’s eyes held remembrance, not reproach.

“What does that word mean?”

“It means to correct your mistake or make it right some other way.”

Yana’s face cleared. She was wearing blue jeans and a shirt with a neon red mushroom from an old Mario Brothers game. She took an orange from her backpack and unpeeled the skin in a continuous strip, with care uncustomary for an eight-year-old. “I spilled milk on my bed sheets once, which upset Mom. The next morning, I brought her breakfast in bed, while she slept.”

“That was redemption,” he said.

“Orange?” She handed him a slice. “Please, tell me more about when I was little.”

He put the orange in his mouth and sucked on it, without chewing. “It was you and me, for the first eleven months of your life. Your Mom worked a lot, same as she always does. She shot you out of her body and gave you to me with one hand, while mixing an algae tube, with the other.” Colton finished the slice and collected its seeds. He wanted to remember he had had an orange with Yana. “You and me. We did all right, despite the endless nights or the diapers I had no idea how to put on. One July evening, I even ran to the ER – two miles from our house – with you burning up in my arms and me wearing boxers, stubble and the weight of the world in my hands… But we did all right.”

Yana wrapped her arms around her knees. “Why did I forget you, then?”

“I had to leave, so I wouldn’t hurt you again.”

“Fathers should protect their daughters, not hurt them.”

“I wasn’t a very good father.”

“Am I safe with you, now?”

He waved a hand and shook his head. “When you were six months old, you cried so much, your face would turn purple. We had a coloring book at home, with ducklings. I’d show you a finished duckling first, colored in yellow then trace over a black-and-white one with my finger, as if my finger were a brush. Your eyes would blink, tiny coffee beans, and you would stop crying and take deep sighs. And you’d watch me trace the ducklings with my finger.”

“Did you keep the book?”

“I lost it the night I carried you to the ER. I took it with me, so you wouldn’t be scared in the hospital. I didn’t take my eyes off you, but I forgot the book. And I paid the price the following months. You refused to fall asleep without the ducklings. I would pace inside our apartment with you in my hands – we’d go for miles.”

“I have a piano competition in two weeks. Will you come watch me?”

Across from her, Colton breathed through the nose to collect himself. “I wouldn’t miss it, patte.” Then he found the courage to ask about her and Yana shared with generosity. How she always wanted to have a pony she’d call Nicholas. How she postponed pulling out her loose tooth for an extra day because she wanted to give the Tooth Fairy a full day’s notice. And how she planned to marry Bobby Tober, the only boy in her class she didn’t feel yucky about. He took her in, remembering the words verbatim, as if to last him another seven years. Then the door opened, “Mr. Parker,” a face peeked in the frame, “two more minutes,” then disappeared.

He reached over the table and caressed Yana’s cheek with the outside of his hand. She didn’t pull back. So this was how happiness felt like, he thought, and swallowed to unclog his throat. “Today’s the last time I’ll see you in a while,” he said.

“That’s OK. I won’t be much fun until my competition is over anyway.”

“I’ll come to your concert wearing a bright red hat so you can spot my head in the crowd – like the mushroom on your shirt.” He gave her a grin.

“What happened to your hand?” she said.

“This guy?” He raised his stump, looking at it as if it were a foreign object. “Tsk, tsk... I must have dipped my hand in invisible ink.”

Yana slapped her forehead. “Invisible ink doesn’t exist.”

“Of course, it does. I can dip you in it sometime, holding you by the nose, so the only part of Yana you’ll ever see again is this nose floating around…”

The door behind them opened again. This time the head walked in with a body attached. “Time’s up, Mr. Parker.”

Yana looked at the clock on the wall. “I need to go to my piano class.” She headed for the door then turned. “I think you might be a good person, I will prove it to my Mom and to you.”

“Eight-year-olds aren't supposed to talk like you.”

“Eight-year-olds aren't supposed to grow up without their fathers, either.” She waved goodbye and disappeared.