wanted to take her in his arms the moment they met
(and how I would have loved that, had she been me),
but she
whispered icily,
detaching herself from his embrace,
‘Eugene,
I don’t want to have a scene in this place.’
But why not?
It’s the perfect backdrop,
this palace of paper and leather and stone,
with its extraneous extras exhibiting no emotion,
but already she was in motion,
hurtling down the stairs,
and he followed.
‘Tatiana, I have to talk to you …
listen to me, please!’
and his bass voice, thickened by the passion he felt,
echoed
down the stairway, bouncing off the walls,
and she slowed,
exhausted by this suddenly powerful voice,
his desperate pleas,
and on the staircase he managed to grasp her hand.
And when his fingers pressed
against her flesh,
it seemed to both of them that the steps
turned upside down, plunged and climbed,
abruptly,
and they saw
the library staircase
redesigned
by Escher,
and the only thing
that stopped them falling
was his hand
holding hers.
‘Tatiana, listen,’ breathed Eugene, ‘listen to me,
this is all wrong. I mean,
I understand that your work is
important to you, and,
you know, Caillebotte,
all that stuff, too, but
listen … I promise: never
would we ever
be bored together.
I swear it: I was off my head ten years ago; today,
everything is so utterly different.
If you stay with me here instead of going over there,
we’ll be together forever like you wanted back then,
like I want now …
listen
listen to what I want …’
And he told her what he wanted, in an undertone,
while all around them swirled
the flood of rushing students:
for Tatiana he enumerated
the millions of billions of possibilities,
a world of their own;
for her, he narrated
the chapters of their life to come,
and he told them so sweetly, so softly, all those stories,
tales of epic journeys and secret caves,
little details like their wet footprints at the
entrance to a Roman shower,
breakfasts shared in bed, the tray of food sailing
on the duvet’s waves
in the striped Tuscan sunlight that pierced the
Venetian blinds.
He described them all so sincerely and so wittily,
these joys both tiny and sublime:
the palazzos, the museums, the Chianti wines
(and yes, obviously he had a thing about Italy).
We can learn to ski together –
I’ve never tried.
You can watch me fall headfirst into the snow.
And one day I might take you on a surprise trip
to the Venice Biennale, and while you survey
the works on display,
I’ll put my arms around you and nuzzle
your neck and stroke your hip.
One afternoon in Place Alphonse-Deville
we’ll sit on the bench in the square
and read each other passages from books that we feel
are too special not to be spoken in the open air,
and then that night,
while the two of us are strolling hand in hand
we’ll bump into a colleague on the street
‘hey there how are you I’d like you to meet
my girlfriend Tatiana’ and he’ll see you
and stand there stunned, so dazzled he’s practically blind,
and I’ll smile and say, ‘sorry, mate, this one’s mine’
and then
one day we’ll meet your best friend
and I’ll tell you afterwards ‘wow she’s pretty
and she seems like a really great person too’
(whereas in truth she’s nothing next to you)
just to see a little rush of jealousy
sting your face, so I can apologise and kiss it away
and
our bodies like eels in a bath of foam,
tedious meals at my parents’ home,
the liquorice smell of your hair,
two glasses of white wine at the bar downstairs,
all of this and more will be ours …
coming home on the train
from a weekend away,
on my shoulder your tired head,
on my leg your slender wrist,
and sparkling there,
in the train’s harsh light,
a little bracelet that I bought for you
to commemorate our first kiss
and all these moments, Tatiana,
when we’ll be so close,
the two of us,
the hairs on my forearm pricked from static
after I roll up the sleeves of my jumper,
reaching out to touch the hairs on your forearm,
forewarned
that you are
so near that I
can turn my face
a few inches
to the left
and your
lips will
brush
mine
and we’ll
thrill
to the touch
even though it happens every day,
even though it’s normal,
our hands and thighs and hair and hips all touching
all the time …
in air-conditioned airport lounges,
behind rain-streaked windows on creaking trams,
at tables in friends’ houses as we eat dinner,
while yawning in endless traffic jams
(because even when we’re bored,
we won’t be bored of each other –
and at least we’ll be together),
in hotel rooms where sheets and pillows
have been kicked to the floor and suitcases spill clothes,
in the cinema on a Saturday night
in the flickering light
from the screen,
in all these places where all I will have to do
in order to kiss you
on your temple
is lean down
slightly,
in all those moments when we lightly
turn out the light.
And then …
And then, what?
What else would Eugene have to do or say
to Tatiana before she yielded to his passion?
How could she say no after such a declaration?
Just to be on the safe side, he began a negotiation
(let’s not forget that he is Chief Business Adviser
for his company);
attempting to sound tougher and wiser,
he set out to demonstrate
that there is always a solution.
‘Tatiana, there is always a solution –
you know what, I’ll go with you
screw my job, I don’t care about that:
for you, I’d jump on the first plane to San Francisco
and live with you there, I’d make it my home …’
Gripped
by this vision, our Eugene starts making lists in his head
of all the things he’ll do to make her happy:
I’ll cook for her every day, and keep
the kitchen well equipped
&n
bsp; with food and all that stuff,
and I’ll massage her feet and her back and shoulders
long enough
to destress her after a hard day at work,
I’ll accompany her to every exhibition,
I’ll read every article she writes,
and if she ever feels down,
say one November morning,
when the world is cold and ugly and brown,
I’ll arrange a miniature bouquet of mimosas
in a shot glass for her
and I’ll put it on her bedside table before she wakes up,
bright yellow, like a little bursting shrubbery of
Honey Loops,
and by its side
I’ll leave a Post-it saying: ‘hey lover,
I’ll see you this evening –
and I hope everything goes well for you at the meeting.’
And perhaps Tatiana’s mind was filled with similar ideas,
because she squeezed his hand tighter
and her eyes blurred with tears
and she
You know what? I really think
that I can see her hesitate, gesticulate,
stare at the floor, stare at the stairs,
stare into Eugene’s eyes stare through the window outside,
stare into a future filled with all those moments,
as yet unlived,
stare at the prospect of those two Americas:
one towards which she sailed already,
loyal captain, compass steady –
that promised land
of a life she’d elected.
The other a continent unexpected,
in the way of her navigation:
Eugene,
and oh that way he affected
her body, her emotions:
here be dragons,
the map warned her;
no – no – we’ll be – say it! –
we’ll be bored together …
And, faced with these two directions,
Tatiana was in agony,
burning up, torn apart,
her poor heart
aflame,
while her brain
screamed in vain;
despite herself, she was in love …
IN LOVE!
again!
…
and yet
all the same
she was aware
that something was not quite right here:
something was off,
a grain of sand between the gears,
a pea beneath her thick thick mattress
so tiny, and buried so deep,
but still … enough to cause her some distress,
enough to disturb her peaceful sleep;
her conscience, like a thousand darts
pricking the pincushion of her heart,
the certainty that this
would not be happiness,
this unsatisfactory compromise;
Eugene, so impassioned and adorable,
but Eugene also like the heavy ball
attached to the chain around her ankle.
And her life – her own life – like a guilty pleasure,
a desire she could never completely meet …
Tatiana had a vision of those two passions, each defused;
she saw herself alone and together with Eugene,
in an American living room, sprawled on a
gigantic sofa, staring at a huge TV screen,
caressing each other sadly, their dreams dented,
bruised,
forgotten,
the two of them sunk in silence,
not wishing to blame the other
for an existence
that could have been
so much better …
‘No.’
She said it.
I don’t believe it.
She said no. She refused.
‘No, it’s impossible,
the time isn’t right.
I don’t know what else to tell you
except:
I’m sorry, and I have to go;
except:
this hurts me as much as it hurts you;
except:
of course I’ll regret it, we both will;
but that’s the way with everything, don’t you see?
I’m sorry, Eugene,
I really do have to go.
I’m already not really here, you know.’
Eugene realised that she wouldn’t surrender,
that she would leave him behind,
and he resigned
himself to this fate, almost as if …
… as if he’d felt the pea under his mattress too
and realised that even a thousand nights of making love,
pounding the pea down from above,
would not be enough
to make the bed smooth.
There was only one thing left to do,
one sole concession that he might tear
from the hands of fate
before this love vanished forever,
one last resort before it was all over:
Give me a night or two.
Give me the chance to show to you
what it is that I mean when I speak
of my love;
and then I’ll bow out. Enough.
Unless you ask for more.
And taken with this thought he heard himself implore,
‘You know, it’s not too late:
we still have two days,’ he whispered,
‘when we could be together …’
This thought made his whole body tremble with desire
and he caught hold
of Tatiana’s cold
white tense hands
and
he said
please. This was his only reality now,
this breathless vow,
and she, in his eyes, was radiant
with hesitation …
Tatiana murmured,
‘Eugene, it wouldn’t be worth the suffering –
two days is nothing.’
‘No, two days is better than nothing;
two days is so much; it’s a glory, it’s a prize;
go tell a butterfly that two days is nothing.
Two days is twice as long as the
butterfly lives before it dies.’
And suddenly,
I remember –
I remember a story about a butterfly,
and the fleeting vision of a fine dark line of hairs –
*
Oh I believe that it was that fleeting vision that saved
Eugene and Tatiana this time,
because ten, a hundred, a thousand times before,
at this point in the story, she’d have run away,
she’d have left the library,
she’d have passed through the curtain of light and
disappeared,
just as Eugene feared;
and he would have been left alone,
the diamond of his happiness turned to sand
escaping between his fingers,
stunned at having held it in his hands
so tightly, only to see it slip away,
and he’d have knelt on those twisted stairs,
collapsed in despair,
and on a final, deafening note,
we would all have wept with him
(yes, even I,
and I hardly ever cry) …
we would have wept for the Tatiana
he had lost forever,
for the vast void at the centre
of his life and,
in the centre of that centre,
another empty space:
Lensky
and Olga and the huge tiny nothingness of his life;
we would have wept
for these Russian dolls all taken apart,
all emptied of their hearts.
But this time, things a
re different.
Because this time, there is this memory,
this sudden flash of lust,
this arrow loosed from the depths of adolescence,
and personally, I have absolute trust
in the power of such a remote reminiscence
and all the others that it trails in its wake;
I believe they are capable of changing the course
of a story,
even a story written and played
and played again so many times,
even a story that we know by heart,
even a story barricaded by the masters of their art
in a famous opera, a long poem;
and it seems to me –
I believe this truly –
that when we are confronted by the past,
even accidentally,
when we are brought suddenly
ten thousand feelings
back in time,
then this padlocked poem, deathless,
perfect, so fine,
thick with the dust of two hundred years,
can be made to change its final lines.
And so,
at that moment, as if swift fingertips
were reaching through the distance
of centuries to place between Tatiana’s lips
a blueberry, ripe with the taste of her teenage past –
the taste of that summer so tragic and sublime,
the taste of nights spent watching the stars
spark and die,
imagining embracing and being embraced,
wondering which path she should take –
and if, when lying next to Eugene,
she would have known
how to touch, caress and taste,
then at that moment, ten years on,
when all her dreams
suddenly acquired the blueness and roundness of the real,
Tatiana opened her lips
to
reveal:
‘Two days, and that’s all.’
‘That’s all,’
replied Eugene,
immediately swearing to himself
that all would be everything.
Everything: every possible rectification.
Everything: every possible justification.
Everything: every wrong righted, every sin redeemed.
Everything: the endless night of lovemaking he’d dreamed.
Everything: all their greatest and their least desires,
and everything:
every pleasure and every fear
hoarded over the last ten years,
over the last two hundred years,
theirs, of course, but also yours and mine,
and those of the whole wide world,
all of them, compressed into an attic bedroom
in the ninth arrondissement,
behind the Grévin Museum;
everything: the two of them
among the waxwork figures,
so that when they came to the end of their life
they could say:
In Paris With You Page 19
