“I’ll be there at 4:00, Maria said,” murmurs Mayakovski. “8:00, 9:00, 10:00.” 11:00, 12:00, 13:00, I count silently, picking up where he left off. 14:00, 15:00, 16:00, I used to wait for her for hours. 17:00, 18:00, 19:00, but no matter how long I waited, she never came. If I waited at home I’d be sure to catch her, but I wanted her to come to me, at a faraway place I’d taken time to get to. 20:00, 21:00, 22:00.

What if I kept on counting, past 23:00, beyond that terrifying border of 24:00—midnight. If I missed the chance to return to zero, I’d have to keep on traveling alone into nonexistent hours, 25:00, 26:00, 27:00, and then I’d have no one to share time with.

“I’ll be there at 4:00,” Maria said. “8:00, 9:00, 10:00,” Mayakovsky repeated. I know that painful, empty feeling of waiting for someone who doesn’t come, I was going to say, but my tongue had other ideas and, before I knew it, came out with something entirely different:

“How long are you going to wait? You have a different future, don’t you?”

That sounded awfully affected. The word Zukuft (future) left a residue of falsehood on my tongue. Why had I spoken to Mayakovsky in German anyway? That sort of thing often happens in dreams—you find yourself conversing in a language the other person doesn’t know. I’ve heard that while Mayakovsky was in New York, he became very close to a Russian exile named Elli, who translated poems from German for him. Their translational trysts led to insemination and produced a new female poet, which means Mayakovsky didn’t know German. Or was he just feigning ignorance so he’d have an excuse to get close to Elli?

“I want it now—that future you’re talking about.” Mayakovsky was excited, his breaths coming quickly as if he couldn’t wait another minute.

“Don’t get so antsy,” I replied as calmly as I could. “You’ve got plenty of time, haven’t you?” But then I realized how cruel that must have sounded. After all, he might have taken it to mean, “Being dead, you have all the time in the world.”

Imagining the future is a mental exercise I’ve practiced since I was a child. “What do you think the capitals of civilized countries will look like a hundred years from now?” Since my fifth-grade art teacher first asked me this question, I’ve redrawn my vision of the future again and again. Every time I try to imagine a city in the future, the screen in my brain goes blank, making it hard to breathe. Bearing the pain, I regulate my breathing and gradually begin to see things. These visions are often based on strange-looking buildings that actually exist. For instance, the Reichstag Building, which has a dome surrounded by a glass wall, with a spiral passage that follows the curve from the dome’s base all the way to the top. As they climb the slope, German citizens, immigrants, and tourists can all watch the politicians at work through the glass. It’s something like an aquarium. Some of the spectators cheer, “Glasnost!” When you reach the very top of the dome, you look straight down on the politicians’ crowns, many of which are crooked. You can watch corruption as it happens. It’s more thrilling than a live broadcast. The politicians, on the other hand, don’t stop their dirty dealings just because they’re being watched; when they are exposed, they’ll freely admit their transgressions and bow their heads low. “I apologize from the bottom of my heart to the German people,” they might say, without seeming to feel much responsibility. That’s because “the German people” are just like customers, so they don’t mind bowing down before them at all as long as they can make money off them.