HUM

We could hear it from any point in the house—upstairs,downstairs, even the garage. From the kitchen the sound wasfaint, like the upswing of a snore with no silent intervals in between,all intake of breath, no release. While we were eating atthe small table by the window, forks and knives clicking againstour plates, it was there in the background, a reminder. If wespoke loudly, the hum could be drowned out for a moment.In the beginning we tried, it was like a game, we attempted tokeep a dialogue going during the entire dinner just to cover thehum with the sound of our voices. This went on for our firstfew weeks in the house, but there were only the two of us there,we knew each other well, and there was not much to be said. Atone point, without ever voicing a mutual decision, we gave up.We fell into long silences, just the click of silverware on plates,the sound of wine being poured into a glass, the polite chewing—andbeneath it all, or above it, the continual hum comingfrom the second bedroom, the source of our livelihood and ofour growing discontent.

With music we could disguise it, could forget it for three orfour minutes at a time, but there was always the moment whenone song ended, the tinny whir of the CD player while it movedon to the next, so that, eventually, even music lost its joy for me.

At night, from our room across the hall, we could hear it."It's just white noise," my husband said. "If you'd stop thinkingabout it, you wouldn't notice it at all." So I tried to stop thinkingabout it, but the more I tried, the louder it became. My uneasewas intensified by the fact that we were not allowed to go intothe second bedroom; in fact, we had never even seen it.

Twice a month someone would stop by to check the equipment.He or she would arrive unannounced and knock discreetlyon the side door. Often, this person would bring a cake or abottle of wine, so that it would look to our neighbors as thougha friend had come calling. Once inside, he would avoid conversationand head straight for the second bedroom, toting a largeduffle bag. Never once did any of the maintenance personnel—that'show they always introduced themselves, not by name, butsimply, "Hello, I'm the maintenance personnel"—agree to stayfor coffee. Their abruptness heightened my sense that, eventhough we were merely caretakers of the equipment, not its subjects,we were under its scrutiny twenty-four hours a day.

Because the equipment had to be supervised round theclock, my husband and I never went anywhere together. If wewanted to see a movie, we would toss a coin. The winner wouldwalk down the street, past the rows of primly painted mansions,the neat driveways with expensive cars, across the cityroad, to the Cinaromaplex. The place was so named becauseof the machines that piped appropriate smells into the theaterduring movies—the smell of gunpowder during a gunfightscene, smoke and liquor during a bar scene. The Cinaromaplexwas even equipped with the musty scent of sex for certain Rratedmovies, and for the more gruesome films, there was thedistinct, metallic odor of blood. The winner of the coin tosswould come home straight after the movie, and the one whohad been house-sitting would go to the next showing. Later wewould discuss the movie as if we had seen it together, as if wewere an ordinary couple who went on outings as a pair, ratherthan as two halves.

It was the same way with restaurants, plays, and museums.When we first moved into the house, we made a pact that wewould not sacrifice these small pleasures, the many cultural offeringsof our beloved city. We decided to live as we always had,with minor adjustments. For a while we honored the pact, butabout the same time we stopped insisting on dinner conversationwe also ceased our elaborate efforts to see the same movies,eat at the same restaurants, view the same museum exhibits. Theinevitable result was that, over time, we became more like roommatesthan a couple.

That is not to say I was entirely without companionship.

Some nights, unable to sleep, I would step into the backyardin my bathrobe. I would leave the porch light off, so as not tobe seen, and would stand there in the dark, the wet grass slipperyunderfoot, and watch the Uradian Embassy. I would gazeup at the third floor corner window, where the light was alwayson, and I would watch the ambassador sitting at his desk, his tiepulled askew. I could never really make out his face, just the figureof him there. He sat as still as a man could possibly sit, andI wondered what he was doing awake, night after night, whileeveryone else in the building slept.

I wanted to call up to him. I wanted to tell him about thesecond bedroom, and the machinery that hummed behind theclosed door. I wanted to tell him about the dissolution of hiscountry, a dissolution which, to him, might be only the vaguestfear, or perhaps even a nightmare he thought would likely cometrue—but no matter how vivid the nightmare, how disturbinghis fears might have been, he could not have known for certainthat his country was being slowly dissembled at that very moment,and that the machinery of its destruction hummed in thestately red brick house behind him. This is what the equipmentdid: it listened, it watched, it recorded everything.

Those nights, standing in my borrowed yard and staring upat the ambassador's window, I began to wonder if it is possible tolove a man you have never met, if love can be born out of sympathyalone, and out of the knowledge that one's own life's workis intricately connected to the ruination of another. Could I lovehim simply for his insomnia, for the square of light cast by hiswindow onto my sleeping lawn, for the knowledge that, withouthim, my own life would in some manner be rendered pointless?

I decided that I could.

I did not tell my husband about my late-night trips to thegarden, although some nights he must have woken and foundme gone. I did not tell him that I dreamed of this man's country,of miles and miles of unused train tracks ending in abandonedtowns, of once-prosperous markets that were now home to alonely clerk guarding a few loaves of bread, a single poor cut ofmeat. I did not tell him that there were days when I sat for hoursimagining myself in the ambassador's country, starting a new lifewith him there.

Isn't it true that everyone, at some point, dreams of beginninganew—with new friends, new surroundings, a new lover?Doesn't everyone, at least once, dream of abandoning her ownlife?

* * *

My husband and I had become caretakers of the equipmentby virtue of timing. The opportunity arose through a friend Ihad met years earlier while working as an administrative assistantin a government building. One afternoon in June, I ran into myold friend in a coffee shop. I mentioned that the landlord wasraising our rent and we were going to have to move to a cheaperapartment across the river.

"Perhaps we can help each other," he said. "Do you have afew minutes?"

Over a cup of coffee, my friend explained that a trustworthycouple of impeccable discretion was needed immediately toinhabit a very nice home in the Duncan Hill District. "Shouldyou be approved and choose to take on the task, you would berewarded with free rent and household expenses."

Duncan Hill was a dream, the kind of tastefully wealthyneighborhood I would never have imagined myself living in.The homes there had the best river views in the city, and theboutiques that lined the neighborhood's main street sold oneof-a-kind dresses and handbags that cost more than I made ina month.

"What's the catch?"

"If you are selected, you'll have to be very careful," myfriend said, biting into his almond biscotti. "You couldn't havevisitors, the department would retain the right to enter the houseat their discretion, and the second bedroom would be strictlyoff-limits. Most important, under no circumstances would yoube allowed to have contact with anyone from the Uradian Embassy.Think of it as a luxurious house arrest."

I talked it over with my husband, he agreed, and after aquick but extensive background check and a series of intense interviews,we were approved. We moved in quietly on a Saturday,and that night we celebrated with champagne on the balconyoverlooking our small, well-maintained backyard. "What do yousuppose is going on in there?" my husband whispered, tippinghis glass toward the embassy.

"That's exactly the kind of question you're not supposedto ask."

I glanced up at the embassy, and that was when I saw theambassador for the first time, standing in a square of light in thethird-floor corner window. He seemed to be staring out towardthe river, but there was no moon that night, no way he couldhave seen the water in the darkness. Our own lights were off,so we must have been invisible to him. He reached up to loosenhis tie, and I felt a quiet, guilty thrill, as if I had been invited toplay some mysterious and possibly dangerous game, the stakesof which were unclear.

* * *

The ambassador's country, which was so small that the mediararely took notice of it, had managed several years before toget on the wrong side of my own government. Our governmenthad attempted, first through economic and political pressuresand later through a coup, to oust the prime minister, whose presencethey considered to be a threat in the region. The coup hadfailed, in large part because it lacked the support of the citizenry,and ever since then a few dozen of our sharpest political andmilitary minds had been working to slowly ruin Urada from theinside.

Over time, their efforts were proving successful. Urada'sbank system was in a shambles, all four of its major industrieshad been brought to their knees, and violent splits had emergedwithin the major political parties. The most recent elections haderupted into riots so widespread that the elections had to bepostponed indefinitely. The country appeared to be on the brinkof civil war. A high-ranking official of our government tookadvantage of the riots to make a public statement that we werewilling to "step in on behalf of the people" should the situationgrow worse.

In the aftermath of the riots, I had seen the ambassador ontelevision, firmly holding his ground. "Our leaders are aware,"he said, "that 'step in' is merely a euphemism for foreign troops,martial law, and Urada's loss of sovereignty."

I did not know whether it was a trick of television cameras,or instead a trick of the third-floor window, but the ambassadorappeared much larger on television than he did from my backyard.He had dark hair giving way slightly to gray, blue eyes, aprominent forehead, and a faint scar traversing the bridge of hisnose—all of which, taken together, made him attractive in anunsettling way. He always wore a light blue tie and dark suit, andon television he seemed to be in perpetual motion, his handsmoving nervously as he spoke. If I could have talked to him inperson, I would have told him that stillness suited him better,that those nights alone in his office he seemed possessed of anatural authority. But I could never speak to him. I could onlyadmire him from afar.

* * *

Originally, moving into the house seemed like a wise decision.A year before, my husband and I had both given up stableoffice jobs to pursue more fulfilling careers. I had gone intofashion design, a lifelong dream, and my husband had becomea personal trainer. Both of us failed to make enough moneyto survive. After our meager savings ran out, I took a positionmanaging an exclusive boutique, and my husband gave up theidea of a private practice and went to work for a gym. Sincemost of our earnings went to pay the rent, we had abandonedour dream of buying a home in the city. This new arrangementwould help us save money for a down payment on a house ofour own.

I secretly relished the idea of working in tandem with myhusband, with a shared goal and a shared secret; perhaps itwould help to rekindle a lost camaraderie between us.

As it turned out, however, we rarely saw each other excepton weekends and a couple of hours between shifts. I would comehome from a day spent catering to wealthy socialites, exchangea few polite words with my husband before he left for work,and take a long, hot shower. I would step out of the shower andinto the humming house, put on a bathrobe, and pad barefootdownstairs. I would make myself a small dinner and sit aloneat the kitchen table, waiting for darkness to fall. Then I wouldwander out to the backyard and look up at the corner window.More often than not, the ambassador would be there within thesquare of light, a dark shape at his desk, sometimes writing ortalking on the phone, but usually just sitting completely still. Itstruck me that he was a supremely lonely man, that we wouldmake the perfect couple.

It was not our job to view the material being gathered in thesecond bedroom, or to relay information about the goings-onwithin the austere embassy building. We did have a key, but itwas only to be used by direct order from the department or incase of extreme emergency.

I put this question to you now: Does loneliness constitutean emergency? What about despair? Add to this an unsettlingattraction, perhaps affection, that slowly builds to somethingthat, by some definitions, might be called love. Is this, then, anemergency? What would you have done faced with the figure inthe window, the ongoing ache of wanting to know him, and thedistance imposed by two governments locked in a philosophicalwar? And in a kitchen drawer, hidden beneath the napkins andcoffee filters, beneath the plaid contact paper, a key. You havetried to forget it is there, but it is impossible. Night after night, asthe hum vibrates through the house, you run your fingers overthe small, solid shape of the key.

* * *

I began to do research. The ambassador was only 44 yearsold, younger than I had imagined. He grew up in a small industrialvillage in southern Urada, where he excelled in school. Atthe age of 16, he earned an art scholarship to the University ofUrada, where he supplemented his studio courses in paintingand drawing with difficult seminars in international law. Upongraduation he worked for several years as a law clerk beforemoving to England to take an advanced degree in business atOxford. He did not complete his degree, but instead returned toUrada and ran for a minor office in the town where he grew up.From there, he worked his way up the political ladder.

A few weeks into my research, I discovered an interestingfact on an obscure blog written by an Uradian university student:the ambassador had been one of several hundred childrenorphaned by a factory disaster in the early sixties, and from theage of five until he left for college, he had been shuttled fromrelative to relative. There was a photograph of the ambassadorat the age of seven, standing in the first row of a group of severaldozen schoolchildren. The photograph suggested the usualboisterousness and chaos that attends large groups of children,but the young boy who would become the ambassador seemedfrozen in place as he stared into the camera, arms crossed overhis chest. I too was an orphan. I too had spent my childhood inmany different houses, among many different adults. The orphanmoves through life with a peculiar loneliness only anotherorphan can understand, always feeling not quite one with theworld.

* * *

In November, five months after we moved into the house,there was a sudden flurry of activity. Instead of coming twicea month, the maintenance personnel began appearing at ourdoor once a week. By the end of December it was three timesa week. In early January, five hundred of our soldiers arrived inUrada on a "peacekeeping mission." The event hardly made thenews—just ten seconds on CNN's World Minute, slightly bettercoverage on BBC. Only by searching the small stories far backin the newspaper did I discover that the ambassador had bluntlycriticized the action. "This is clearly a military occupation disguisedas something benign," he said.

There was no public outcry to speak of; even the most vociferousof the left remained silent. No one seemed to knowwhere Urada was or what we were doing there.

During my nocturnal visits to the garden, I noticed that theambassador was spending less and less time at his desk, moreand more time staring out the window, yet he never so muchas glanced my way. I had expended so much of my emotionalenergy on him, so much of my time, and he did not even know Iexisted. It reminded me of a terrible crush I had for three yearsin high school on a boy one grade above me, a boy I never met.When the object of my affection graduated, I felt a deep senseof regret for never having spoken to him, never having mademyself known. I was a shy teenager with few friends, and afterthe boy disappeared from the school I felt an overwhelmingsense of despair. Now, it was as if that high school crush wasbeing repeated, albeit with much higher stakes.