Eight White Nights

by André Aciman

  “Stay a bit. You don’t have to drink.” It sounded very off-the-cuff, almost like a polite afterthought, but I knew that, with Clara, casual did not mean perfunctory. She was speaking in code. The informality was aimed at him, not me. She might have been pleading with me to stay. I, instead, chose to take her nonchalant tone to the letter. I was operating in bad faith, until I realized that the casual accent of her request might have been intended for me as well: she wanted me to stay, because it would look better if I did, but it made no difference—one way or another.

  What I wanted all along became instantly clear to me as soon as I stood up to leave. I had expected her to change her mind and not order anything once she saw me stand and put my coat on. She’d leave with me, and I’d walk her home, as was our habit. The bakery. Straus Park. This time I’d ask to come upstairs even if she didn’t.

  “I hope you feel better,” she said. She was pretending this was all about not feeling well and about catching up on sleep. I looked at her to mean, So you’re really not coming? “I think I’ll stay awhile and have another drink,” she said.

  I shook his hand, and Clara and I kissed goodbye on both cheeks.

  I’m never having anything to do with her again. Never seeing her again. Never, never, never.

  This had been one of the worst days of my life. The worst, actually. It would take a few days, maybe another week, then I’d put the whole thing behind me. Or was I underestimating the damage? Give it a year, until next Christmas Eve—the soul holds its own anniversaries and all that . . .

  Instead of walking downtown, I walked up to Straus Park. No more, no more, no more, I thought. This is the last time I’m coming here. I remembered the candlelit statue filled with votive tapers standing upright, and the crystallized twigs, and the bleeding for love, and the walk to and from the cathedral as she drifted away from her friends and brought me to this quiet spot and, just as we were getting very, very close, said she wanted a strong, ice-burning shot of vodka. She’ll pass by, and each time she’ll think of me, and be with me, and one day, with her husband, when they stare out of her living-room window at the snow falling over the Hudson, she’ll break down and say, Sad is his voice that calls me, and she’ll turn old and wizened and nodding toward life’s close and be filled with gall and remembrance, telling the first beggar she’ll find in Straus Park, He loved me once in the days when I was fair.

  This cruel and spectral city. Manattàn Noir. All of it was noir. The snow was just a screen, a lie—for it too was noir. Snow hurts because it deceives you. With gleaming asphalt you know you’re dealing with dark, hard stuff and beaten-down slate underneath and shards of glinting glass mixed in. Snow is like pith and like molten tar, except it’s soft on the outside, like velvet and bread, and the good things that yield as soon as you just touch them. But underneath, it’s black, blunt, and bituminous, and that’s how everything felt tonight. Black, blunt, and bituminous.

  I stood around a moment, hoping she’d have second thoughts and come after me. But no one was coming this way. The area around Straus Park was deserted. Everyone was gone. The stranded Magi with their heads ablaze were gone, Phildonka Madamdasit was gone too, Rahoon and the beggar woman had probably come and gone. Just our shadows now, or just mine. Leopardi, the poet, was right. Life is bitterness and boredom, and the world is filth.

  SEVENTH NIGHT

  I hoped she’d ask one day, when none of this mattered, Why did you leave that night? Because I was angry. Because I grew to hate myself. Because I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to sit quietly and go on struggling with him, with you. I was losing you, and sitting in a bar watching the loss unfold before me unleashed more bitterness yet, because you seemed determined to speed up its course. I felt ridiculous, weak, ineffectual. I hated you, and I hated you for making me hate myself. I was pissed. Pissed that you never once let me catch my breath on those nights when all I did, it seemed, was watch the torrent of missed opportunities race past us. I blamed you for inhibiting impulses that had nothing wrong with them, then for holding these very same inhibitions against me. I blamed myself for thinking it was your fault. It was mine, always mine.

  All I saw that night was the lightness with which you turned a new leaf and were letting yourself off ever so easily—see, one hand, one hand—while fate in the form of a jack-in-the-box waved a broomstick over my head. Yes, we could have gone somewhere with this, but see, we all change. You made me find solace in self-pity. I could never forgive this.

  I’d thought of waiting for you inside the park. I was even tempted to send you a text message and say something either funny or obscene about Monsieur VFC, or so cruel that it would burn all bridges between us if I hadn’t already burned them at the bar. But you’d pick up your phone and, on the pretext of not wearing glasses, hand it to VFC, ask him who the caller was, then grab it from his hand and shove it back into your coat pocket. Printz!

  I stood in a pool of white light trying to feel enchanted and cleansed as I’d felt on my first night here. But it didn’t work. I recited more verses by Leopardi to myself, squeezing out some comfort, knowing that if no solace came, then beauty might come in its place, and that beauty on this most sullen noir night in December would be good enough. But nothing came. Then I saw a yellow cab. I hailed it, got in, and was welcomed by the comforting warmth of old upholstery, and the vague acrid smell of curry and cumin. I was in a noir, black-and-white world, and I wasn’t being let out of it.

  No sooner in the cab, though, than I asked the driver to take me to Riverside and 112th Street. He’d have to go all the way down to 104th Street, he said, then turn around and head uptown. Did I mind? No, I didn’t mind. All I wanted was to return to the spot where I’d stepped off the bus and gotten lost on the night of the snowstorm. The blizzard had lasted all through the party and hadn’t quite cleared when she walked outside with me hours later. Now I was going back to where things seemed safe no matter how clueless my steps that night. Just me and two silly bottles walking up the stairs by the statue of Samuel J. Tilden.

  As the cab passed by her building, I looked up at her window to see if she might be home already. But the car came too close, and it was impossible to look up.

  I got off right at the spot where I’d seen the St. Bernard. Or had I imagined the dog while thinking of medieval Weihnachten towns that turn dark and gray and then empty faster than the last grocer can pull down his roller shutters in the winters of pandangst? Who walks alone in the dead of night in Saint-Rémy but madmen and seers and those longing for otherpeoples?

  Longing for others. What a concept!

  I walked east on 112th Street, aiming for Broadway, but enjoying the suspense, because I knew where I was headed but didn’t quite want to admit it yet. This, by the way, is what I’d do in two days if I decided to go to Hans’s New Year’s party: walk up toward the cathedral, turn right on Broadway, walk down another six blocks, and finally turn right on 106th. Is this what I was planning to do tonight as well? Or was all this a roundabout ploy to pass by her building or, better yet, run into her as she’s heading home on her way back from the bar?

  What are you doing?

  I was taking a walk in the snow. Or just venting.

  Venting?

  As in learning to live with myself, now that you’re no longer in my life.

  No longer in your life?

  From the look of things—

  From the look of things you’re the one who walked out, not me.

  Yes, but from the look of things . . .

  From the look of things you should take a hike. If I were to run into her on her way home, I’d more than likely run into the two of them together. Even if he wasn’t going upstairs with her, he’d still have to walk her home. Would she give him her arm when they walked together and burrow under his armpit?

  When, as I knew would happen, I approached 106th Street, I began to walk slowly. I didn’t want them to see me. But I didn’t want to see them either. Had they had enough time t
o order another round before leaving the bar? Then I realized why I was hiding—because I was hiding, wasn’t I?—I was ashamed of skulking like this, of hanging around her house, of spying, on them, on her. Stalker. Stalk-er!

  If I had to bump into her at this late hour, all I’d want is for her to be alone.

  What’s wrong?

  Couldn’t sleep. Didn’t want to be alone. That’s what’s wrong.

  What do you want from me? Spoken with impatience, pity, and exhaustion.

  I don’t know what I want. I want you. I want you to want me as desperately as I want you.

  Why had I let her walk away from me this afternoon? What was I thinking? A woman walks into your house, is clearly telling you she cares, grabs you by the gonads, and you just stand there, jittery Finnegan running for cover while panic-stricken Shem and Shaun race fast behind, clamoring up the Pelvic Highway.

  But if she wasn’t alone and if I had to bump into the two of them, I’d utter a mirthful “Couldn’t sleep” and shrug my shoulders, adding, “I was on my way to the bar, hoping you hadn’t left.” I could just picture the two of them standing together on the sidewalk in front of me, disbelieving glances thrown back and forth, all three of us looking so uneasy. Good night, Clara. Good night, Manattàn. And I’d scurry home, knowing that the first thing I’d want to do was call her and say, Manattàn noir, c’est moi.

  On the corner of 106th Street and Broadway I decided to walk one block south, turn on 105th, and come back to 106th by way of Riverside. I wanted—or so I told myself—to take a last, farewell look at her building, especially if I wasn’t going to the party in two days. Could be years the next time I come around here, years and years.

  But I knew this was just a ruse to take another peek.

  The road down 105th couldn’t have been quieter along the row of white town houses that seemed to slumber in an otherworldly, snowbound era of fireplaces and gas jets and hidden stables. No one had shoveled the snow, and it looked as pristine and wholesome as Rockwell’s towns on snowbound nights.

  By contrast, her large building, when it came into view on the corner of 106th Street, bore a minatory scowl on its forefront, as though its Gothic windows and friezes knew of my whereabouts in the snow and, like two distrustful Dobermans, were lying still, almost feigning sleep, vigilant and set to pounce as soon as I took another step. Then I spotted Boris’s light and his side entrance door. I could never tell where exactly he sat, but no sooner would we near the door every evening than he’d always be there to let her in. If I wasn’t careful, he’d spot me. I looked up and to my complete surprise noticed that the lights in her living room were all on. How shameful, I thought, spying.

  So she must have gotten home while I was walking slowly down Broadway. This either meant that they had had a hasty round of drinks or had decided against it and simply left the bar soon after me. Or she may never have turned off her lights before leaving this morning. Was she the type to leave her lights on all day? I didn’t think so. Chances were, she’d just gotten home and had turned on the lights in the living room. Maybe watching TV. Unless, of course, she was not alone.

  I crossed the street at 106th and Riverside and headed north, trying to catch a glimpse of the other rooms immediately upstairs. These were lit up as well, though I couldn’t tell if their light was being referred from the living room. I was not even sure that one of the side windows belonged to her apartment. She had forgotten to show me around after offering to. I had probably tried not to sound too curious, or too eager, and had finally come out sounding indifferent, which perhaps was why she didn’t insist. I remembered wanting to see her bed but not wanting to show I did. Did she make her bed every day or did she leave it undone?

  On the corner of 107th I had to make a decision: either walk back down Riverside or walk over to Broadway, and then loop around 105th once again. In the snow, it might take me ten minutes.

  There was something so peaceful about walking. It would allow me to think about things, speak to her in my mind, find reasons to see how all this might work itself out one day, even if I knew that such walks seldom bring answers, that no one resolves anything, much less sees through the fog we burrow in, that all walking does is keep our legs and eyes busy the better to keep our mind from thinking anything. The most I’d be capable of right now would be to think about thinking, which meant sinking deeper into myself, which meant blunting everything else, including my thoughts, which meant spinning something everyone else would call daydreams. Perhaps all this wasn’t necessarily headed downhill—even thinking in this quiet, aimless manner was itself, like amnesia and aphasia, a form of healing when the body comes to the mind’s rescue and ever so gently numbs it, wiping bad thoughts one by one as I’d seen the nurse do with the child who was bleeding from the leg, blotting his cuts with soft, delicate, occasional light dabs with a folded piece of gauze, while with deft tweezers she picked out shard after tiny shard of shattered glass, dropping each one in a plastic trough, trying not to make a sound so as not to scare the boy. All my mind wanted now was to fantasize, because images were like feathers on a bruise, while thoughts flowed like iodine on open sores. She and I together when we’d make up. She and I together on New Year’s Day with those friends she said she wanted me to meet. On the last evening of the Rohmer festival, she and I together.

  Now I was just walking. Walking to bid farewell. Walking to spy on her. Walking to be one with all the stonework that had watched her grow and knew all about her comings and goings as a child, as a student, as Clara. Walking to drag out my presence in Clara’s world and not to go back home and be alone with my thoughts that aren’t even thoughts any longer but leering gargoyles sprung from a monstrous netherworld I never knew existed in me until I’d seen them milling about me dressed as sandwich men. Walking, let’s face it, in the hope I’d find a portal back into her life. Walking as prayer, pleading, and penance. Walking to refuse the end of love, to refuse the obvious by picking at it, step by step, shard after shard, taking in the truth of it in tiny doses, as one takes poison so as not to die from it.

  In years to come, when I’ll pass by her building again, I’ll stop and look upstairs. I don’t know why I’ll look upstairs or what I’ll be looking for each time. But I know I’ll look upstairs, because this purposeless looking upstairs in this kind of dazed and balmy mood I’m in right now is itself remembrance and soul gathering, an instance of grace. I’ll stand there awhile and remember so many things: the night of the party, the night I thought I’d done the right thing by saying goodbye without lingering too long outside her lobby, the night I first felt my nights were numbered here. The night I knew, just knew, she’d change her mind the moment I said, Yes, I’ll come upstairs with you, the evening I looked out her window and wished my life might start all over again, in her living room, because everything about my life seemed to converge on this one room, with Clara, the barge, our strange lingo, and Earl Grey tea, as we sat and spoke of why this piece by Beethoven was really me, while part of me began to think I’d made the whole thing up to make conversation, to stir things up a bit, because I really had no idea why the quartet by Beethoven was me, any more than I knew why Rohmer’s stories were me, or why I wanted to be here on so many winter afternoons with Clara, trying to understand why the best in life sometimes takes two steps forward and three steps back.

  I looked up and knew. It was all there: fear, wanting, sorrow, shame, bitterness, ache, and exhaustion.

  Now, as I spied the very end of her block from Broadway with its one lit window that must have been the maid’s room overlooking Straus Park, it struck me that though we’d never really had anything here, still maybe we’d also lost everything here, as though something from being so piously wished for had managed to become the memory of something lost without having existed at all, a wish with a past that never had a present. We’d been lovers here. Once. When? Couldn’t tell. Perhaps always and never.

  •

  I walked down 105th Street once again
—placid, serene, white-pillared lane. The town houses stared at me with frowning suspicion.

  Why are you here again?

  I am here because I don’t know why I’m here.

  Her lights were still on. But too bright. What on earth could she have been doing? Should I look for a human, two human shadows flitting behind the drapes? Would she come near the window when her cell phone rings? Just tell me I’m not spying at the wrong window.

  Could she be the type who sleeps with all the lights on? What if she left the lights on because she likes to come back home and find the whole place lit up, the way I do sometimes, to forget I live alone? Or was she moving from room to room, which was why the place was all aglow? Or were the lights on everywhere because she hated the dark when she was alone and this was her way of showing she was alone and hated it?

  Suddenly someone turned off the lights in her apartment. She’s gone to bed. A frightful thought raced through my mind: They’ve gone to bed.

  But on 106th Street, I noticed that her kitchen light was still on. Who goes to bed with a lover and leaves the kitchen light on?

  No one.

  Unless it’s in the heat of passion.

  What was she up to?

  Cognac? Hot toddy? A little snack? How easy can human contact be, how easy had it always been? Why was it so unusually difficult with Clara?

  The kitchen light still puzzled me.

  What can a kitchen light possibly mean? How many times do I turn mine on and off before going to bed?

  And then it hit me: I’ll never ever know why that light was on so late, nor ever see that kitchen from the inside again. Suddenly the kitchen light stood like a distant beacon that was far crueler than the storm itself.

  Boris!

  He stepped out into the cold to finish his cigarette, stood there awhile gazing at nothing, then flicked the butt halfway across the street. I made certain he didn’t see me.