Good on Paper

by Rachel Cantor

  He followed four years later with Romance Language, poems that extended his explorations into the constitution (or lack thereof) of meaning by language. More volumes appeared in the seventies and eighties, all celebrating his trickster persona, his inauthentic voice, his disconnection from language: Bad Words, Baby Talk, Nonsense Syllables.

  There were other, less flattering versions of his life, of course, and this is what I wrote about. Some claimed that Romei had learned Italian not as a student of literature, but as a prisoner of war, or as a collaborator—making him both older and less innocent than we liked to believe. He was by one account a Red Brigades sympathizer, by another, an unrepentant monarchist. One Dutch historian claimed that he’d manufactured his Jewish heritage—though whether to create sympathy for himself or deflect attention from a fascist past, she couldn’t say. A self-inflicted circumcision at the end of the war became septic, she said, leading to lifelong problems with erectile dysfunction.

  What was true? The Great Man wouldn’t say. And if he did, we couldn’t believe him. We couldn’t believe a word he said (he said), about anything.

  When I gave up on T. in grad school, gave up on Dante, Romei taunted me: Told you so, told you so.

  This has nothing to do with you! I shouted. Dante is a fake and a liar! I hate his stupid freakin’ lyin’ Dante guts!

  He became my virtual companion, then, my only friend. I kept a copy of his latest in my back pocket as I wept in the stacks, or watched T.’s house, hidden by a stunted tree. Romei forgave me my failures. Why try, he seemed to say, when it was folly, all folly? We could count on nothing, certainly not the generosity of the gods. There is no order, he’d say, consoling me with tough love. There is no beneficent judge! We are lonely nomads, monads all alone—get used to it!

  That made sense to me so I gave up on love, quit grad school, and married Ron, the accountant, because he asked. Romei quit, too—some said to care for his wife, who was sick, or maybe because he’d written himself into a corner.

  Eleven years later, when the world had lost interest in Romei, when one could have been excused for thinking him dead, he won the Nobel.

  It’s about time, he grumbled on CNN. I’m broke and need to get my teeth fixed. He opened his mouth before 200 million viewers, and showed them a black tooth in back.

  America was charmed. A half dozen celebrity dentists offered to do the work for free.

  They rushed him onto Larry King, where he complained he couldn’t find a suit to fit his, uh, portly posterior. Ralph Lauren asked for his measurements.

  Maybe we were tired of hectoring laureates with their big words, their excess gravitas. Romei was a man of the people, or so he’d have us believe. We loved his curmudgeonly style, his malapropisms: he became our poet icon, though few of us read his work. But everyone saw him on Letterman, his goatee mostly white, his hair thick, his stomach carried high and tight like a late-term pregnancy. His wry humor, his outrageous insults made even Letterman laugh, a little.

  Are you serious about anything? a starlet asked.

  I’m serious about my spaghetti, he replied.

  Journalists persisted, intent on solving the mystery of Romei. Barbara Walters inclined her head ten degrees to the left and said, Romei, may we get serious for a moment? You’ve said we mustn’t talk about your wife. Why is that?

  He walked off the set.

  But now this very public, very private man was writing about that most off-limit topic: his wife. And it was I—I—who would bring that work to the (English-speaking) world.

  Carramba! I shouted. It wasn’t Latin, but it would do.

  5

  BEST INTERESTS OF THE CHILD

  I’d planned to do laundry that night, but Ahmad rescheduled bowling so we could celebrate. We sent Andi, newly returned from Pammy’s with cinnamon on her lips, to get ready for bed, then Ahmad toasted me with what was left of the cabernet. At forty-five, he still looked like the boy I’d known thirty years before in Rome—fine skin, narrow frame, hair falling into his face. His soft-spoken demeanor caused some to think him harmless, but they were wrong: he was a sniper who flattened poseurs with a phrase and never felt remorse.

  He wanted to know more.

  I explained about Vita Nuova (Not that old chestnut! he exclaimed. I can’t believe Luigi Pieranunzi made me read that in college. Why would you make students read that, when there’s so much good Dante to read?). I didn’t enlighten him about my translation, and I didn’t have to tell him about Romei—Ahmad had read his work long before it had become fashionable—but I did explain about poetry and prose, the story of Romei’s wife. And grad students everywhere, the footnote at the apex of the ridge of the postmodernist canon. Andi, I said, would have someone else to look up to. It wouldn’t be just Ahmad doing Career Day! Nothing, I gushed, would ever be the same.

  Let me adopt her, he said, sitting forward in his Eames chair. Let me adopt Andrea.

  Oh, no, I thought. Not this again.

  Ahmad, I said, we’ve been through this, like, a hundred times!

  When I came home from India, pregnant and broke, I was desperate: how could I live in the City, an underemployed single mom? I considered returning to Suffern, where I’d lived for eight years as Ron’s wife. Telling myself I liked being a wife, I liked Ron’s jokes, his habit of counting socks and planning sex. Ron, who found the City dirty and, truth be told, me too. Where I’d thrown my life in the hot-water wash and watched it shrink. It would be less expensive in Suffern, I reasoned, but then I thought: living on the subway would be better than that.

  Friends shrugged and looked embarrassed when I asked what I should do, as if I were asking something of them. Then I remembered Ahmad. He’d always been logical. Surely he’d have a better idea, one that didn’t involve giving birth on the IRT.

  I hadn’t seen him for more than a year, not since Jonah, the unrequited love of his youth, had died in front of us, killed by a yellow cab on my thirty-fifth birthday. We’d been in high school together, the three of us (four if you count his sister Jeanette, though we weren’t friends then); I didn’t remember Jonah, but he remembered me. Actually, he more than remembered me: he tortured Ahmad for years with remembrances and besotted “what ifs.” So that when the three of us were to get together for the first time in twenty years, it was me Jonah was watching, not the road.

  Or so Ahmad said. He blamed me for Jonah’s death, he said things, unforgivable things. He knew why my mother left us: It was obvious, look at me! What a slut I’d always been! All because I let Ahmad kiss me freshman year, though I was in love with T.—then I pushed him away, and was mean about it. He’d had choice words for me then, too, and our friendship, our beautiful friendship, melted away. When he called me twenty years later, I was about to divorce. I didn’t worry about our falling out: I only thought he knew me when. When I’d been young, before my twelve-year detour with T., when I still believed my future was shiny and bright. If I could just see that Shira reflected in his eyes, I might know how to live again, but we were barely together five minutes when Jonah appeared across the road.

  When I met him at the Palm Court of the Plaza, pregnant, a year later, I saw not the angry man who’d just seen his best friend die, but the dear, sweet, generous friend of my youth. We reminisced and laughed, and cut postage-stamp-size cucumber sandwiches into quarters just for fun. I told him about translation, how I’d just started writing stories; he told me about his transformation from conservative think-tank analyst to college professor and also-ran Nobelist. I’d intended to ask only for advice, but, giddy with how well we were getting on, I thought: He should be a part of my life, our life. I might not inspire my child, but he could. So I asked him to be my child’s godfather. He shocked me by crying. Yes, he said, my God, yes!

  It turned out he lost everything the night Jonah died. He came out, finally, losing not just his wife, which was no loss, but his sons as well.

  We came to an understanding that day at the Plaza: I would be the child�
��s one true parent, but Ahmad’s name would appear on her birth certificate, his enlightened university would cover our insurance, her education. People would assume he was her (nominal) father, but we would know better: that her father was a Sikh I’d met in Delhi; when Andi was older, she’d know it too. We could even live at his place till we got on our feet. By some administrative fluke, his apartment was large enough for all of us, and then some.

  We never left.

  Ahmad turned out to be a great dad. He took on midnight feedings, and didn’t mind changing nappies (as he called them). He sang lullabies in Urdu and watched our Andi sleep. Later, he shucked his Italian shoes to help her construct mega malls out of Legos, and had tea with her many dolls. He endeavored to explain conservative economics on Career Day and entertained Andi’s friends by drawing pictures of them standing next to film stars. Still, I had to remind him: ours was an arrangement of convenience, in the best interests of the child. I was the mother: I made the decisions, I took the flak. Still, periodically, he asked about adoption. As it was, he’d say, his rights meant nothing. One blood test and they’d be gone.

  Who’s going to make you take a blood test? I’d ask.

  Every time he brought it up, he had a new argument. This time he asked, what if something happened—to me, he meant.

  You mean, if I decided to abandon my baby at the airport?

  I wasn’t comparing you to your mother, as you very well know.

  If I died, then?

  Or became incapacitated.

  Or became incapacitated. Lovely, I said, holding out my glass for more wine.

  We have to plan for contingencies, he said.

  That’s what the birth certificate’s for! I said, or maybe I shouted.

  He was concerned about our daughter’s development, he said. She was reaching the age of rational discourse. It was time she knew who her real father was.

  Rational discourse? The girl who insists she has a telepathic relationship with Tinky Winky? Who believes most Chinese words are made up?

  Shh! he said. The look he gave me could have made raisins out of grapes.

  If we don’t tell her now, he said, she won’t forgive us when she learns the truth.

  You’re such a drama queen! I said, and waited for him to say, Better than a dairy queen, which was his usual response. Instead he said, You’re being selfish, Shira. You’re thinking only about yourself.

  You know that’s not true! I said. She’s way too young!

  Whatever it is, I heard my baby say, I’m not too young.

  We wheeled around in our chairs.

  Andi was at the entrance of the living room, wearing her primrose flannel nightie, though it was August. I’m nearly eight, she said. In addition to which my Enrichment Facilitator says I have an old soul.

  We’re talking about Ahmad’s secretary. She’s way too young. Too young to water-ski.

  Why would she think Ahmad was her father?

  We were speaking metaphorically, I said.

  I hate figurative language, my baby said. You know that.

  I know that, I said, repressing a smile.

  Tinky Winky was missing, it turned out. Andi distinctly remembered leaving him in the kitchen when she was building her Tupperware kingdom.

  Searching ensued, till Ahmad found that bad boy grinning under Andi’s bed.

  6

  COMFORT ZONE

  The next morning I felt wonderfully well—the kind of well that comes from knowing things are happening, the New Life is upon us. I went to Cuppa Joe’s, where I ordered a decaf-skinny-mocha-capp and two bear claws from Joe himself, a tall, bulky Iranian (né Ali) with whom I’d once been “intimate.” I was still here often, though Joe had married a Persian maid half his age, siring black-haired twins.

  I nodded at the regulars—it was too late for the silk-clad boutique lady, and the bespectacled Barnard student, but the latte-drinking actor who once starred in a sitcom about fat men was there, as was the black man with the deformed hand—then I stopped across Broadway to tithe Nate, our local panhandler who, over the years, had transformed himself from “down on his luck” to “Vietnam Vet” to “victim of Agent Orange” to “homeless man with AIDS (not homosexual).”

  Can I offer you some change? I asked as I gave him his claw.

  No, thanks, he said, I’m fine the way I am.

  Our favorite joke.

  I brought my breakfast to Straus Park, known in our Den of Propinquity as Slice of Park, because it’s shaped like a piece of pie. Slice of Park commemorates Isidore and Ida Straus, who had a summer home nearby. Isidore immigrated to the U.S. in the 1850s and began his career in Macy’s china department, eventually buying the store with his brother. He and his wife perished with the Titanic, but still, not bad for a new life!

  The park had itself recently been revived. We’d watched out our window, bemoaning the Port-a-Potties, the loud equipment, the seemingly endless labor. But it was worth it, because, with minimal West Side fanfare, the park finally reopened. The rotting benches were gone, the statue of Memory was restored, her fountain no longer dry.

  I sat often in Slice of Park when the weather was clement, feeling sun-blessed. From my bench I could see Joe’s, People of the Book, the Dollar Store, the Love Drugstore. A few blocks away, beyond my sightline: larger parks, Cohn’s Cones, the China Doll. Just north: Abdul’s Papad Palace, the Eight Bar. Ten blocks south: Symphony Space, the express train. All my cultural, entertainment, transportation, snacking, and discount-shopping needs met within half a mile. I called it my Comfort Zone.

  On this morning, I beamed out at the world—at the women checking themselves out in the drugstore window, the nannies pushing strollers, lapdogs bouncing in straw bags against matronly hips, alte kockers gesticulating in the Broadway island. The red-headed boy pushing a scooter as his brother reached desperately for it from his father’s arms. At taxis, buses, kamikaze bike messengers, all honking, screeching, and converging right here, as if Slice of Park were the center of the universe—which to me it was.

  New York was more than the places I loved, the people I cared about: it was the web that held us together, that made us all possible. It was the history of this park, of places that were no more—the Pomander Bookshop, the Ideal Restaurant, the Olympia Deli, the summer home of Isidore Straus—it was Memory! It was Iranian pastry chefs and Victims of Agent Orange, it was Old and New World ladies and men. I felt vast love for all who dared to make a life for themselves here.

  It was in this exalted mood that I gave notice.

  But you have a future in prosthetic legs! Mr. Ferguson said.

  7

  ODOROUS OBJECT

  Once home, I thought I should dignify my New Life with a ritual—a sacrifice of some kind, a naked dance in the woods. The best I could come up with was to brew some Philosopher’s Tea. The original PT, procured by Ahmad in Azerbaijan, was long gone, but I continued to refill the box with English breakfast. If the philosopher’s stone could transmute base metal into gold, so too could PT transmute my oh-so-base thoughts into words; all that was inchoate would be graced with form. Hallelujah!

  I drank it whenever I translated, which meant it had been a while. On the box, a reminder of the professional standard to which I aspired: High-quality tea recalling odor and smack lemon. Store at a dry place away from odorous object.

  I brought my tea to the loveseat in the study. I didn’t know when Romei would send his book, but I could prepare for that moment by rereading some of his work.

  When I left grad school, I’d wedged my copies of his books under wobbly tables at the Hungarian Pastry Shop, my idea of a joke. I found Ahmad’s copies and arranged them in chronological order against my chest, from Mother Tongue to Nonsense Syllables.

  They emitted a mild electric charge: my body was buzzing, my arteries thrumming. I opened Mother Tongue, broke the binding, and began to read.

  •

  Maybe I fell asleep. There was the matter of the wine I’d drunk t
he night before and, well, the matter of Romei’s poems. I put the books in my mom-bag and went back to Cuppa Joe’s, where I ordered a mocha double-half-caff and, all virtue, said no to a chocolate bomb.

  I read some more, then put the books away and stared out the window. If they had been my copies rather than Ahmad’s, I might have slipped them under Joe’s wobbly table and been done with it.

  There was a time when I would have translated Romei for a latte and a package of peanuts. I felt close to him then; I could have gotten closer—I could have gotten very, very close. Translation requires, and generates, a rare kind of intimacy. Like sex done right, I’ve always thought. The translator makes a holy commitment to understand, to listen with all possible intensity, to step backward, ever backward, through the labyrinth of an author’s ideas and devices, uncovering his decisions and triumphs, line by line, until she arrives, finally, at the moment of creation—and before, when words are merely phonemes and breath, and the author lies naked and drunk with his obsessions, visions, and agonizing aphasia. The translator, like one of Noah’s sons, bears witness to this primal scene. It takes a strong stomach. And an attractive host. You had to want to get close.

  When I translated Dante’s Vita Nuova, I’d wanted to get close: Like Dante, I was in love, with T.; Vita Nuova seemed written just for me. Dante lived for his true love’s greeting? So did I! His love was a paragon? So was mine! A glimpse of his love made him stupid? Me too! Beatrice was heaven-sent, Dante’s love divinely sanctioned? T. and I were also meant to be. He was my Beatrice, the sum of all virtue, the reason I had been put on this earth.

  I found my place comfortably between Dante’s lines then, his nakedness didn’t bother me.

  Until it did. Romantic events shattered the pretty idea I had about God’s plan for man, and with it, any interest I had in “getting close.” I hated Dante then—Dante and his stupid Vita Nuova! The libello, his libelous little book, was nothing more than a reminder that I’d been abandoned not just by the love of my young life, but by every hope I’d had that the world was as Dante described—ordered, designed to manifest a greater Love.