The History of Love

by Nicole Krauss

  I threw off the sheets and stumbled across the floor, banging into a table leg. HELLO? I shouted into the phone, but the line was dead. I hung up, went to the kitchen, and took a glass down from the cabinet. The water gurgled in the pipes and splattered out in a burst. I drank some down and then remembered my plant. I’ve had it for almost ten years. It’s barely alive, but it is alive. More brown than green. There are parts that have withered. But still it lives, leaning always to the left. Even when I rotate it so that what faced the sun no longer faces the sun, it stubbornly leans to the left, choosing against physical need in favor of an act of creativity. I poured the rest of my water into its pot. What does it mean, anyway, to flourish?

  A moment later the phone rang again. OK, OK, I said, picking up the receiver. No need to wake the whole building. There was silence on the other end. I said: Bruno?

  Is this Mr. Leopold Gursky?

  I assumed it was someone trying to sell me something. They’re always calling to sell. Once they said if I sent in a check for $99 I’d be pre-approved for a credit card, and I said, Right, sure, and if I step under a pigeon I’m preapproved for a load of shit.

  But the man said he wasn’t trying to sell me anything. He’d locked himself out of his house. He’d called Information for the number of a locksmith. I told him I was retired. The man paused. He seemed unable to believe his bad luck. He’d already called three other people and no one answered. It’s pouring out here, he said.

  Couldn’t you stay somewhere else for the night? In the morning it’ll be easy to find a locksmith. They’re a dime a dozen.

  No, he said.

  All right, I mean, if it’s too much . . . he began, then paused, waiting for me to speak up. I didn’t. OK, then. I could hear the disappointment in his voice. Sorry to have disturbed you.

  And yet he didn’t hang up and neither did I. I was filled with guilt. I thought: What do I need with sleep? There will be time. Tomorrow. Or the next day.

  OK, OK, I said, even though I didn’t want to say it. I’d have to dig up my tools. I might as well be looking for a needle in a haystack or a Jew in Poland. Hold on a second, will you—I’m getting a pen.

  He gave me an address all the way uptown. Only after I hung up did I remember I could wait forever before a bus came at that hour. I had the card in the kitchen drawer for Goldstar Car Service, not that I ever call it. But. You never know. I ordered a car and started digging through the hall closet for my toolbox. Instead, I found the box of old eyeglasses. Who knows where I got them. Someone probably selling it on the street with some mismatched china and a doll with no head. From time to time I try on a pair. Once I cooked an omelet wearing a pair of ladies’ reading glasses. It was a mammoth omelet, it struck fear in my heart just to look at it. I fished around in the box and pulled out a pair. They were square and flesh-colored, with lenses half an inch thick. I slipped them on. The floor dropped from under me, and when I tried to take a step it lurched upwards. I staggered toward the hall mirror. In an effort to gain some focus I zoomed in, but miscalculated and banged into the glass. The buzzer rang. When your pants are down around your ankles, that’s when everyone arrives. I’ll be down in a minute, I shouted into the speaker. When I took off the glasses, the toolbox was there under my nose. I ran my hand across its battered top. Then I grabbed my raincoat off the floor, smoothed down my hair in the mirror, and went out. Bruno’s note was still taped to the door. I crumpled it into my pocket.

  A black limousine idled in the street, rain falling in the headlights. Other than that, there were only a few empty cars parked along the curb. I was about to go back into the building, but the limousine driver rolled down the window and called my name. He wore a purple turban. I walked up to the window. There must be a mistake, I said. I ordered a car.

  OK, he said.

  But this is a limousine, I pointed out.

  OK, he repeated, motioning me in.

  I can’t pay extra.

  The turban bobbed. He said: Get in before you get soaking.

  I ducked inside. There were leather seats, and a pair of crystal liquor bottles along the sideboard. It was bigger than I’d imagined. The soft exotic music coming from up front and the gentle rhythm of the windshield wipers only barely reached me. He pointed the nose of the car into the street and we headed into the night. The traffic lights bled into the puddles. I opened a crystal bottle but it was empty. There was a little jar of peppermints and I filled my pockets. When I looked down my fly was open.

  I sat up and cleared my throat.

  Ladies and gentlemen, I’ll do my best to keep this brief, you’ve all been so patient. The truth is I’m shocked, really, I’m pinching myself. An honor I could have only dreamed of, the Goldstar Lifetime Achievement Award, I’m practically speechless. . . . Has it really been? And yet. Yes. All of the evidence suggests. A lifetime.

  We made our way through the city. I’ve walked through all of those neighborhoods, my business took me all over the city. They even knew me in Brooklyn, I went everywhere. Picking locks for the Hasids. Locks for the shvartzers. Sometimes I even walked for pleasure, a whole Sunday I might have spent just walking. Once, years ago, I found myself in front of the Botanical Garden and went in to see the cherry trees. I bought some Cracker Jacks, and watched the fat lazy goldfish swimming in their pool. There was a wedding party taking photographs under a tree, the white blossoms made it look as if it alone had been caught in a snowstorm. I found my way to the tropical greenhouse. It was another world inside, wet and warm, like the breath of people making love had been trapped there. With my finger I wrote on the glass LEO GURSKY.

  The limousine came to a stop. I put my face up to the window. Which one? The driver pointed to a townhouse. It was beautiful, with steps up to the door and leaves carved in stone. Seventeen dollars, the driver said. I felt in my pocket for my wallet. No. Other pocket. Bruno’s note, my underwear from earlier that day, but no wallet. Both pockets of the coat, No, No. I must have left it home in the rush. Then I remembered my fee from the art class. I dug past the peppermints, the note, the underwear, and came up with it. Sorry, I said. How embarrassing. All I have on me is fifteen. I admit I was reluctant to part with the bills, hard-earned wasn’t the word for them but something else, more bittersweet. But after a brief pause the turban bobbed and the money was accepted.

  The man was standing under the doorway. Of course he hadn’t expected me in a limousine, and out I’d popped like Mr. Locksmith to the Stars. I was humiliated, I wanted to explain, Believe me, I’d never mistake myself for anyone special. But it was pouring still, and I thought he needed me more than he needed any explanation of how I got there. His hair was matted down from the rain. He thanked me three times for coming. It’s nothing, I said. And yet. I knew I almost hadn’t come.

  It was a tricky lock. The man stood above me, holding my flashlight. The rain was dripping down the back of my neck. I felt how much depended on my unlocking that lock. The minutes passed. I tried and failed. Tried and failed. And then at last my heart started to race. I turned the handle and the door slipped open.

  We stood dripping in the hallway. He took off his shoes, so I took off mine. He thanked me again, and went to change into dry clothes and call me a car. I tried to protest, saying I could take the bus or hail a taxi, but he wouldn’t hear of it, what with the rain. He left me in the living room. I wandered into the dining room, and from there I caught sight of a roomful of books. I’d never seen so many books in one place that wasn’t a library. I walked in.

  I, too, like to read. Once a month I go to the local branch. For myself I pick a novel and for Bruno with his cataracts a book on tape. At first he was doubtful. What am I suppose to do with this? he said, looking at the box set of Anna Karenina like I’d handed him an enema. And yet. A day or two later I was going about my business when a voice from above bellowed, ALL HAPPY FAMILIES RESEMBLE ONE ANOTHER, nearly giving me a conniption. After that he listened to whatever I brought him at top volume, then returned it t
o me without comment. One afternoon I came back from the library with Ulysses. The next morning I was in the bathroom when, STATELY PLUMP BUCK MULLIGAN, rang out from above. For a month straight he listened. He had a habit of pressing the stop button and rewinding when he hadn’t fully understood something. INELECTABLE MODALITY OF THE VISIBLE: AT LEAST THAT. Pause, rewind. INELUCTABLE MODALITY OF THE. Pause, rewind. INELUCTABLE MODALITY. Pause. INELUCT. When the due date approached he wanted it renewed. By then I’d had it with his stopping and starting, so I went to The Wiz and got him a Sony Sportsman, and now he schleps it around clipped to his belt. For all I know he just likes the sound of an Irish accent.

  I busied myself looking through the man’s shelves. Out of habit I looked to see if there was anything by my son, Isaac. Sure enough there was. And not just one book, but four. I ran my finger along their spines. I stopped on Glass Houses and took it off the shelf. A beautiful book. Stories. I’ve read them I don’t know how many times. There’s one—the title story. It’s my favorite, not that I don’t love them all. But this one stands alone. Not alone, but apart. It’s short, but every time I read it I cry. It’s about an angel who lives on Ludlow Street. Not far from me, just across Delancey. He’s lived there for so long he can’t remember why God put him on earth. Every night the angel talks aloud to God, and every day he waits for some word from Him. To pass the time, he walks through the city. In the beginning he’s in the habit of marveling at everything. He starts a collection of pebbles. Teaches himself difficult math. And yet. With each day that passes he’s blinded a little less by the beauty of the world. At night the angel lies awake listening to the footsteps of the widow who lives above him, and every morning on the stairs he passes the old man, Mr. Grossmark, who spends his days dragging himself upstairs and down, upstairs and down, muttering, Who’s there? So far as he can tell that’s all he ever says, except for once when out of nowhere he turned to the angel as he passed on the stairs and said, Who am I? which so startled the angel who never speaks and is never spoken to that he said nothing, not even: You’re Grossmark, the human being. The more sadness he sees, the more his heart begins to turn against God. He starts to roam the streets at night, stopping for anyone who looks like they need an ear. The things he hears—it’s too much. He can’t understand it. When he asks God why He’s made him so useless, the angel’s voice cracks trying to hold back angry tears. Eventually he stops talking to God altogether. One night he meets a man under a bridge. They share the vodka the man has in a brown bag. And because the angel is drunk and lonely and angry with God, and because, without his even knowing it, he feels the urge, familiar among humans, to confide in someone, he tells the man the truth: that he’s an angel. The man doesn’t believe him, but the angel insists. The man asks him to prove it, and so the angel lifts his shirt despite the cold and shows the man the perfect circle on his chest, which is the mark of an angel. But that means nothing to the man, who doesn’t know from the mark of angels, so he says, Show me something God can do, and the angel, naïve like all angels, points to the man. And because the man thinks he’s lying, he punches the angel in the stomach, sending him tottering backwards off the pier and plunging into the dark river. Where he drowns, because one thing about angels is that they can’t swim.

  Alone in that roomful of books, I held my son’s book in my hands. It was the middle of the night. Past the middle. I thought: Poor Bruno. By now he’s probably called the morgue to find out if anyone brought in an old man with an index card in his wallet that says: MY NAME IS LEO GURSKY I HAVE NO FAMILY PLEASE CALL PINELAWN CEMETERY I HAVE A PLOT THERE IN THE JEWISH PART THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION.

  I turned my son’s book over to look at his photograph. We met once. Not met, but stood face to face. It was at a reading at the 92nd Street Y. I bought tickets four months in advance. Many times in my life I’d imagined our meeting. I as his father, he as my son. And yet. I knew it never could happen, not the way I wanted. I’d accepted that the most I could hope for was a place in the audience. But during the reading something came over me. Afterwards, I found myself standing in line, my hands shaking as I pressed into his the scrap of paper on which I’d written my name. He glanced at it and copied it into a book. I tried to say something but there was no sound. He smiled and thanked me. And yet. I didn’t budge. Is there something else? he asked. I flapped my hands. The woman behind me gave me an impatient look and pushed forward to greet him. Like a fool I flapped. What could he do? He signed the woman’s book. It was uncomfortable for everyone. My hands danced on. The line had to move around me. Occasionally he looked up at me, bewildered. Once, he smiled at me the way you smile at an idiot. But my hands fought to tell him everything. At least as much as they could before a security guard firmly grasped my elbow and escorted me out the door.

  It was winter. Fat white flakes drifted down under the street lamps. I waited for my son to come out but he never came. Maybe there was a back door, I don’t know. I took the bus home. I walked down my snow-covered street. Out of habit I turned and checked for my footsteps. When I arrived at my building I looked for my name on the buzzers. And because I know that sometimes I see things that aren’t there, after dinner I called Information to ask if I was listed. That night before I went to sleep, I opened the book, which I’d put on my bedside table. TO LEON GURSKY, it said.

  I was still holding the book when the man whose door I’d unlocked came up behind me. You know it? he asked. I dropped it and it landed with a thud at my feet, my son’s face staring up. I didn’t know what I was doing. I tried to explain. I’m his father, I said. Or maybe I said: He’s my son. Whatever it was, I got the point across because the man looked shocked and then he looked surprised and then he looked like he didn’t believe me. Which was fine with me, because after all who did I think I was, showing up in a limousine, picking a lock, and then claiming to be the progenitor of a famous writer?

  Suddenly I was tired, more tired than I’d been in years. I leaned over, picked the book up, and put it back on the shelf. The man kept looking at me, but just then the car honked outside which was lucky because I’d had enough of being looked at for one day. Well, I said, making my way toward the front door, I’d better be going. The man reached for his wallet, took out a hundred-dollar bill, and handed it to me. His father? he asked. I pocketed the money and handed him a complimentary peppermint. I stuffed my feet into my wet shoes. Not really his father, I said. And because I didn’t know what else to say, I said: More like his uncle. This seemed to confuse him enough, but just in case I added: Not exactly his uncle. He raised his eyebrows. I picked up my toolbox and stepped out into the rain. He tried to thank me again for coming but I was already on my way down the stairs. I got into the car. He was still standing in the doorway, looking out. To prove that I was off my rocker, I gave him the Queen’s wave.

  It was three in the morning when I got home. I climbed into bed. I was exhausted. But I couldn’t sleep. I lay on my back, listening to the rain and thinking about my book. I’d never given it a title, because what does a book need with a title unless someone is going to read it?

  I got out of bed and went to the kitchen. I keep my manuscript in a box in the oven. I took it out, set it on the kitchen table, and rolled a sheet of paper into the typewriter. For a long time I sat looking at the blank page. With two fingers I picked out a title:

  LAUGHING & CRYING

  I studied it for a few minutes. It wasn’t right. I added another word.

  LAUGHING & CRYING & WRITING

  Then another:

  LAUGHING & CRYING & WRITING & WAITING

  I crumpled it into a ball and dropped it on the floor. I put the water on to boil. Outside the rain had stopped. A pigeon cooed on the windowsill. It puffed up its body, marched back and forth, and took flight. Free as a bird, so to speak. I fed another page into the machine and typed:

  WORDS FOR EVERYTHING

  Before I could change my mind again, I rolled it out, laid it on top of the stack, and closed the lid
of the box. I found some brown paper and packaged it up. On the front I wrote my son’s address, which I know by heart.

  I waited for something to happen, but nothing did. No wind that swept everything away. No heart attack. No angel at the door.

  It was five in the morning. It would be hours before the post office opened. To pass the time, I dragged the slide projector out from under the sofa. It’s something I do on special occasions, my birthday, say. I prop the projector up on a shoebox, plug it in, and flip the switch. A dusty beam lights up the wall. The slide I keep in a jar on the kitchen shelf. I blow on it, drop it in, advance. The picture comes into focus. A house with a yellow door at the edge of a field. It’s the end of autumn. Between the black branches the sky is turning orange, then dark blue. Wood smoke rises from the chimney, and through the window I can almost see my mother leaning over a table. I run toward the house. I can feel the cold wind against my cheeks. I reach out my hand. And because my head is full of dreams, for a moment I believe I can open the door and go right through it.

  Outside, it was already getting light. Before my eyes, the house of my childhood dissolved to almost nothing. I turned off the projector, ate a Metamucil bar, and went to the bathroom. When I did all I was going to do, I gave myself a sponge bath and dug through the closet for my suit. I found the galoshes I’d been looking for, and an old radio. At last, crumpled on the floor, the suit, a white summer suit, passable if you ignored the brownish stain down the front. I dressed myself. I spat into my palm and forced my hair into submission. I sat fully dressed with the brown paper package on my lap. I checked and rechecked the address. At 8:45 I put my raincoat on and tucked the package under my arm. I looked at myself in the hall mirror one last time. Then I went out the door and into the morning.