Good on Paper

by Rachel Cantor

  I doodled on Dante’s face, gave him bloodshot eyes and pimples. Then tucked him under some secondary sources.

  Tink looked at me funny. Not a word from you, I said, and chose a photocopied article, settled back onto the loveseat, a tape recorder balanced on my chest like a kitten. “Dante and the Schoolmen,” I dictated. Domenico da Firenze sees the influence of the Scholastics in Dante’s use of … etc.

  I read prefaces, afterwords, footnotes, marginalia. I reacquainted myself with debates that raged in the ’70s. I read about Dante’s politics, his theology and fondness for numbers; I lost myself in criticism structural, post-structural, post-non-denominational. I read everything, in short, but Vita Nuova itself.

  When I finally thought to look at the time, it was after midnight.

  Andi! Oh, no! Was she still awake? I tiptoed into her room, found her sleeping with Nancy Drew. I carefully removed the book from her hand, found her Brooklyn Zoo crocodile bookmark, put the book under her pillow next to her flashlight, in case she woke up and had to read some more.

  My dear, my dearest, my sweetest sweetest heart! How could I have forgotten you? Next morning I’d have to pretend I’d done it on purpose, so she could feel her late night was a gift and not evidence of maternal neglect. Gently, I maneuvered her under the covers.

  Why is that man my uncle? she said, slipping her thumb into her mouth.

  I stifled a laugh, unable to imagine what she must be dreaming.

  You have no uncles, I whispered. Good night, precious pumpkin.

  I hate pumpkin, my beautiful baby said. I kissed her angel cheek. The bad man did it.

  What? Had someone hurt my baby? Then I remembered Nancy Drew.

  The perils of late-night reading.

  12

  SLUMBER PARTY

  I returned to the study. Maybe I was ready to try again. I retrieved the book from my pile, this time the English version with the simpering figures on the cover, a Renaissance vision of the supplicant Dante, the celestial Beatrice. My response was visceral: a trembling of the veins, a heaviness of the head.

  Life had offered little recompense for the love I’d lost. I was twenty-seven when I learned that T., thief of my heart, had married.

  We were in the Village—my father’s apartment, I don’t remember why. I still imagined new life with that old love—a fairy tale that began in Rome when I was fifteen and danced for him in the chem lab, imagining myself his Salomé. It didn’t matter that in high school he was all but engaged to Lavinia, just as, twelve years later, it didn’t matter that he lived in D. C. with Diana: I still believed in happily ever after. It was only with me he could be himself, he said. Washington was so full of phonies, and Diana—well, there was a limit to what she could understand. It would happen, I still believed. Feelings as strong as ours didn’t come out of nowhere.

  We made love on the couch that day breathlessly: we didn’t make it to a bedroom, we rarely did. After, unclothed, I danced for him, because he asked, because I felt no shame. I was turning a dreamy circle, when I caught a glint of gold.

  I stopped short; my hair, which was long then, and innocent, fell into my face.

  What’s that? I said.

  My love tool! he laughed, because he thought I was pointing at his thing (as he called it). But no, I was pointing at something far more potent—that thing on his finger. His gaze darted guiltily. I saw that he’d meant to take it off, that he’d always taken it off.

  Dante was no help: if I’d had a gun, I’d have shot his thing—for all those years of subtext, for making me believe what I wanted to believe, which was that we were meant to be. I didn’t have a gun, so I attacked him: punching his chest and pulling his long Nordic hair, pounding his ribs and scratching his arms. I even bit his cheek—for all the times I’d been careful to never leave a mark, to never ever leave a mark.

  Take that to your Princess Di!

  He used his tennis arms and elbows to hold me off. I realized he had an erection—my anger was turning him on! Defeated, I let him go, found my father’s bathrobe, told him he had to leave.

  I didn’t want to hurt you, is what he said as I pushed him out the door.

  After, something made me look in the White Pages: if he could lie about his marriage, he could lie about anything, and there it was, his name, his address, not in D. C. but New York, the Village, just blocks from my father’s apartment.

  Every few weeks that dreadful season, I pulled my hair back and walked. I told myself I needed to think and I walked—from the Upper West Side to his tawny, tony townhouse, with its black iron banister, its box of geraniums, its garden the size of three loaves of bread. I stood across the street, under a stunted tree, partially hidden by its piebald leaves, looking for T. through the blinds, trying to understand where I’d gone wrong. I imagined Diana, his virgin hunter, wearing gardening gloves and Land’s End chinos, kneeling over that paltry bit of earth; she, I knew, could make something grow—why not me?

  I was unmoored. The universe, which had seemed benign, ordered, concerned with my future, revealed its indifference. I stopped going to classes, I disconnected my phone, took up smoking, cut my hair with garden shears, stuffed everything that reminded me of him into a garbage bag and, exhausted, allowed it to sit, gaping, on the living room floor. My dissertation, which included the translation and introductory essay, devolved into a disquisition on the impossibility of love, the impossibility of translation, our shameful, sham-ful enterprise. I published the essay, what there was of the translation, and married. And never loved again.

  Fifteen years later, the lines of Dante’s little book still wrapped like ivy around my inability to finish my degree, the collapse of my belief in a life made new by love. How could I return to Dante, how could I entwine myself in his lines, his lies, his lying arms?

  I put Dante back in his rightful place at the bottom of the pile and went online. A happy voice advised me that I Had Mail. From Benny.

  Thanks for coming by!

  I’d barely replied when I got an instant message from “Jellyroll_Baruch”: Bartleby?

  Ahab! I typed back.

  Late, isn’t it? Don’t mommies get up at the crack of dawn?

  Sometimes we worry till the crack of dawn.

  Andi okay?

  She’s fine. Why’re you up?

  Got any flags? he wrote. We could semaphore out the window. Then he “laughed out loud.” I enjoyed your visit, he added. Let’s not wait another year.

  You could call my cell, you know. You wouldn’t wake anyone.

  There was a pause.

  I like writing you, he typed back.

  Oh, I said.

  Don’t think I didn’t notice you didn’t answer my question before. Do you believe in forgiveness? What do you think it is?

  Forgiveness? I wrote. Whence your interest in forgiveness?

  It’s the month of Elul, he wrote. Our time of reckoning. I tend not to do such a good job—asking for forgiveness, forgiving others. You know the drill. Help a poor Jew out.

  Why did Benny think I knew anything about forgiveness? He knew my history, he knew my mother’s original sin. Couldn’t he let it lie?

  My reply: I don’t know the drill: I’m an unbeliever. I don’t see the point of ritualizing our expiation of guilt. Does fasting make our anger go away? Does saying I’m sorry make anything better? We hurt people, people hurt us—we get over it or we don’t. No matter what, we feel bad.

  I sent the message, then waited. Benny was thinking, or I’d put him off with my reply.

  More, he said.

  More?

  Yes, please.

  If that’s true, I wrote, what can forgiveness possibly mean? You pretend a thing didn’t happen? You acknowledge that it happened but pretend it doesn’t matter? If it matters, then by definition forgiveness isn’t possible. If it doesn’t matter, what’s to forgive?

  Silence.

  More, he said.

  Really?

  More. I’m listening. />
  I thought a moment, then typed:

  Dante suggests a three-part technology for penance: Confession (admit your sin), Contrition (feel sorry for what you’ve done and say so), Satisfaction (make reparation and change your evil ways). This makes sense to me. But I don’t think he tells us how to forgive.

  More silence. I checked my horoscope. Change is afoot, it read, which made me laugh. Was it really a foot? What were its preferences in footwear?

  As you point out, Benny eventually replied, there’s a lot in our traditions about how to atone, less on how to forgive. Apologies help, but what if the offender isn’t sorry, what if the damage is very great?

  My point exactly! I wrote. Are you worried about forgiving or being forgiven? Knowing your good sweet nature, I assume it’s the former.

  You’ve too high an opinion of your old friend. Or maybe you expect too much of ‘persons of the cloth.’ We all do things we wish we could undo, no?

  I suppose, I typed. My interest in this topic, never strong, was exhausted. Whatever it is, I wrote, I can’t believe it’s enough to keep you awake.

  Did I say it was keeping me awake?

  Isn’t it?

  Maybe.

  What is it?

  Silence.

  Subject for another day, he wrote.

  Okay, I replied, wondering why we were “talking” at all.

  Sorry, he said. I want you to like me. I can’t tell you my faults all at once.

  Okay.

  There was a pause.

  Can I call you?

  I thought you liked writing me.

  Now I want to hear your voice.

  When the phone rang, I was slipping into bed.

  You wanna know what I think forgiveness is? Benny asked.

  Sure, I said. Not really, I thought.

  I think forgiveness is a movement of the heart from our own hurt to that of another.

  Meaning?

  I can’t say it any better than that. Remember the Celan quote from that story you wrote? “When only the nothingness stood between us, we found our way, all the way, to each other?”

  Of course, I said, smiling because in just a few days, two people had brought up that story, which I’d thought everyone had forgotten.

  That’s what my head says, Benny continued, but how to make that leap? Even as I urge my flock to make peace over the High Holidays, I’m stuck. Every year it’s the same.

  I’ve been thinking about that quote, too. Weird, huh?

  No coincidences. So what do you think?

  About forgiveness? Celan talks about meeting halfway across the void of subjectivity, misunderstanding, and depleted language. But he assumes a ‘we’ who want to meet. Not everyone’s willing to make that leap—I don’t think I am.

  Hmm, Benny said. I didn’t know if he was agreeing, disagreeing, or had even heard me.

  I yawned into my pillow, turned and stretched my limbs.

  You in bed?

  I froze.

  Kitchen table, why?

  He laughed.

  I’m not coming on to you! I heard the “rustle of bedclothes,” I thought maybe you were tired.

  I’m in bed, but I’m okay.

  Liar! he said. Fiction writer! What’re you wearing?

  Benny!

  Just kidding! What’s keeping you up? What’re you worried about?

  Stuff.

  Oh, c’mon! You’re not worried that I won’t like you! Tell Uncle Benny what’s wrong.

  The whole Romei thing, I said, thinking, Simple is good.

  I wish I were there. Then I could tell if you were serious.

  Of course I’m serious. But you can’t come over.

  Benny laughed.

  Look, I’ve got some baggage, I said. Vita Nuova. Some not-so-great memories.

  A bad reading experience?

  Don’t make fun of me, I said.

  I’m not.

  Oh.

  Mm, Benny said.

  You sound like my shrink, I said.

  You have a shrink?

  No.

  Oh, Benny said, confused.

  There was a pause.

  You know, he said, I’ve never experienced New Life. What’s it like?

  I laughed.

  Not what it’s cracked up to be!

  Would you care to say more?

  The New Life takes no prisoners!

  What does that mean?

  No idea.

  This is fun! Benny said. Like a slumber party!

  I didn’t know guys had slumber parties.

  We didn’t. But we always wondered what you did at yours.

  I’ll tell you sometime. It isn’t interesting.

  Don’t tell me then. I like my fantasies intact.

  Perhaps because I was tired, I found myself wondering what Benny might fantasize about. Waify would-be artists in torn fishnet stockings, unbuttoning their tie-dyed halter tops, Benny in his skullcap saying whatever blessing one says before a striptease …

  But really, Benny said. You can’t be worried about the translation, right?

  I was just talking to Tinky Winky about it, if that’s any indication.

  Pinkle winkle, Tinky Winky, pinkle winkle, Tinky Winky.

  I beg your pardon?

  That’s what Tinky Winky sings. Don’t you watch the show?

  You do?

  Sure. They live in a chromedome and eat Tubby custard.

  You’re kidding, right?

  I wish I were.

  Benny?

  I used to be a Big Brother. It was my little brother’s favorite show. All he wanted was to watch TV. He said he felt safe on my couch, holding my hand and watching TV.

  You’re sweet, I said.

  I thought you knew, Benny said. So what did Tink say?

  If this is the New Life, I want my money back! This is nothing like happily ever after!

  Hah! Speaking of which, I read your Vita Nuova today. What an odd little book! Probably the most non-Jewish book I’ve ever read.

  Eh?

  Well, exile is our defining metaphor, as I’m sure you know. We do small acts of repair, we try to fix the brokenness, but our exile never ends, not until we are collectively redeemed at the End of Days. But for Dante—for all Christians, I suppose—individual pilgrimage is the defining metaphor explaining our life’s journey. What did you call it the other day, the straight-line narrative to salvation?

  Life as intentional journey toward a redemptive end. The hero-as-pilgrim’s journey. Pilgrims’ progress, as it were. Backbone of all story.

  Maybe that’s why I hardly read stories these days, Benny said. Anyway, Vita Nuova is chock-a-block with pilgrims, isn’t it? The figure of Love dresses in pilgrims’ gear, Dante meets different types of pilgrims, pilgrims are everywhere—as if we wouldn’t get the point.

  You know what romei means, right? Pilgrims whose destination is Rome?

  He hadn’t read his footnotes, apparently. I explained.

  Romei sees himself as one of Dante’s pilgrims? Benny asked. That most nihilistic of writers thinks he has a journey to make toward a redemptive end?

  That’s what he thought when he moved to Rome and named himself.

  Whoa, Benny said. I had no idea. What was my point?

  Least Jewish book you’d ever read.

  Right! We don’t have that straight line.

  We? I asked.

  We Jews, Benny said. Or is it us Jews?

  It’s you Jews, remember? I don’t count.

  I Jews, then. I Jews got the spiral. Moses never made it to the Promised Land.

  You’re not making sense, I said. What’s the spiral?

  I’m getting sleepy.

  Oh, no! Tell me about the spiral!

  Benny pretended to snore, honking into the receiver like a cartoon pig.

  You’re thinking of Yeats’ gyre? I asked. His spiral staircase? Nietzsche’s theory of eternal return? They weren’t Jewish. Freud’s return of the repressed?

  I wa
nt you to tell me a spiral story, Benny said. Otherwise I’m going to bed.

  Oh, no! I said. Stay up with me and talk about narrative line!

  What good are you? Benny mumbled.

  G’night then, I said.

  Don’t let the bedbugs bite.

  You’re not going to make me get off first, are you? I said, and we agreed to hang up on the count of three. I smiled into my pillow. But sleep? No. I was thinking about straight lines and spirals, exiles and pilgrims, redemption within reach and ever deferred. Were there any pilgrims left, I wondered, journeying with confidence toward a happily ever after? Weren’t we all homebodies now, couch potatoes eschewing narrative? I had been, till I heard Romei’s irresistible call. Or maybe we were exiles, as Benny said, running from chapter to chapter, chasing an endless spiral (which went where, exactly?). Or refugees pushed by plot points out of our comfy chairs, no noble destination except away-from-here?

  What would that narrative look like, I wondered—the narrative of the passive, the buffeted, the confused? Not heroic. I thought of the irony of Dante-the-homebody writing about a pilgrimage of the soul in Vita Nuova, then Dante-the-exile a few years later, pushed out of Florence, writing about Dante-the-pilgrim in the Comedy. The irony, too, of Romei the exile turning to heroic narrative.

  There would be no sleep tonight. I put my father’s bathrobe on and set some water to boil. Then returned to the study with some PT. It was three in the morning and I was sipping tea, my hair a fright about my head, taking notes about Dante’s straight line to salvation, his meaningful march toward The End, that great resolution in the sky—and checking lines, first one, then another—and why not begin at the beginning? Next thing I knew, I was reading the thing. The dreaded Vita Nuova.

  You know what? I didn’t collapse. Dante’s libello didn’t reach its razor edges into my soft, my throbbing heart. I wasn’t overcome by memories—of T., of romantic failure, the loss of love. I didn’t think of the past at all. I thought about Romei’s work, excited to get to it.

  Go figure.

  Tink, balanced on my pyramid of books, just stared at me.

  I told you so, he seemed to say.

  13

  TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES

  On Monday, I was putting away laundry and explaining to SuperTemps that an opportunity had arisen that required me to suspend relations with their fine establishment—temporarily, that is, till Y2K—when I heard the low hum-whir of the fax across the apartment. Anon! It had arrived! I did a little dance, right there in front of the linen cabinet, something between a hora and the pogo.