Good on Paper

by Rachel Cantor

  What do you want me to say?

  Remember that conversation we had at my house, when I explained about my, uh, patterns with women?

  You compulsively revisit a primal scene by trying to destroy fragile girls, but they kick your ass and have the last laugh. You can’t get off the bus, you’ll always be attracted to this type.

  I might have put it more gently.

  You aren’t contemplating a future with you.

  My point is you’re not like them. I don’t want a fragile girl, I want you.

  I’m glad for you, but I’m not sure what you’re saying.

  I’ve gotten off the bus, Shira. Being with you is different.

  Hmm, I said.

  You don’t believe me.

  Sounds like magic.

  When I described my shit to you that night, something happened. You didn’t judge me, you just listened. I didn’t have to defend myself, which meant I heard myself. When Marie asked me to choose between you, I chose you, remember? It sounds New Agey, but in telling you who I was, in saying no to her, I created the possibility of change.

  Jesus, Benny! You didn’t just say no! You humiliated her and she wrecked your store!

  I didn’t say I was a saint. But this won’t happen with you.

  I thought about that time in Benny’s kitchen when he’d been a centimeter away from crushing me like a bug. I wasn’t convinced. I wanted to be.

  You said that to change your pattern you’d have to forgive your father.

  That’s the weird part.

  It’s all weird.

  The more I turn away from the pattern, the less hold anger has on me. It’s the opposite of what I thought.

  You thought you’d have to forgive him first, then you could get on with your life.

  Something like that. But it’s more dialectical. I haven’t quite figured it out yet.

  Are we talking about Esther again? I asked.

  No, Benny said. Believe it or not, we’re talking about me.

  Sorry.

  Why don’t you continue?

  Sorry. Okay.

  It’s okay. It’s just that I’m having trouble staying awake. I want to hear the rest before I go.

  Right, I said. Okay.

  I’m going to make myself comfortable on your shoulder, he mumbled. My head, I mean. Not my entire self.

  I turned the page, but was just back where I started.

  That’s it, I said, riffling again through the pages. Oh, wait: there’s a footnote.

  I pause.

  You won’t believe this!

  I bet I will, Benny said, his eyes drooping.

  The bastard gave my story an epigraph!

  Read it, Benny said.

  Again, O Shulamite, Dance again, That we might watch you dancing!

  Chapter seven, verse one. Bloch translation. Apposite.

  You don’t know that. The citation, I mean.

  Benny shrugged.

  What do you know about the Shulamite? he asked.

  She’s the female character in the Song of Songs; she dances for her lover. Did Romei write this because the young Shira dances for T. in “Confessions”?

  Did you really do that? Benny asked, his eyes opening.

  It’s fiction, remember? Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t. It’s not supposed to matter.

  The point is, you displayed yourself to him, you signaled your availability, demonstrated your openness to him.

  Something like that.

  Dancing is a good metaphor for that.

  Maybe.

  Satisfied, Benny relaxed again against the sofa.

  I think I know what he’s doing, he said.

  He’s putting his stamp on my work. Twisting it, making it his own.

  Benny thought a moment, burying his hand in his beard.

  I don’t think that’s it. Look, in “Confessions,” you compare yourself to Salomé, dancing to get the head of John the Baptist on a platter. Salomé is a cynical figure, love doesn’t figure into her story at all. The Shulamite, on the other hand, is innocent. Her love is erotic but pure. And reciprocated. Romei is asking you to re-vision your past, to see yourself not as Salomé but as the Shulamite. Reject the calculating, Salomé part of yourself, identify with that innocent part, the part that loves easily, that feels herself loved. You loved that boy in “Confessions,” right?

  I shrugged, blinking back something that might have been tears.

  Benny continued, He’s saying that the thirty-five-year-old woman who wrote “Confessions” was disconnected from her inner Shulamite, if you’ll forgive yet more New Age imagery.

  That’s what the story’s about, I said. Loss of innocence.

  But the woman who wrote it despised innocence as much as her character did by the end of the story. The author can’t accord innocence even to her young, unspoiled self, so she compares her to Salomé. She should have compared herself to the Shulamite.

  That’s enough, I said.

  Benny took my hand, kissed it, but he wasn’t finished: There are some, he said, who think Salomé and the Shulamite are the same person, or two sides of the same person: both names derive from Solomon.

  You want too much from me, I murmured. Both of you.

  I don’t think so, Benny said, leaning over to kiss me. We want everything, that’s not too much. Is that really it, all he wrote?

  I nodded and Benny lay back on the couch, extending his legs onto the coffee table. I held Romei’s pages close to my heart, feeling in them the end of things.

  Had he given up? Had he said all he needed to say? What else was there to say? The ball was in my court, freeze-framed, awaiting my shot. I wouldn’t hear from him again, I wouldn’t hear from my mother. Any decision I made now I’d make on my own.

  Almost.

  I put my hand again on the bristled cheek of my beloved.

  My beloved is mine, he said.

  And I am his, I said, kissing his fingers, one by one.

  You will always be beautiful to me, he whispered. I put his finger in my mouth, and he moaned.

  And you to me, I whispered back, and kissed his arm, his belly, his tzitzit.

  What would happen if I stayed over tonight? he murmured. I want you. I can’t stand this.

  He pulled me up to him, coiled his arms around me.

  I don’t like it either, I said into his chest.

  You don’t?

  I shook my head and stood up, took Benny’s hands, gestured for him to stand. Talk to me, I said. Tell me about Shir haShirim, and I lifted his T-shirt and kissed his long, slender belly, and when Benny said, Kiss me with the kisses of your mouth, I did, and when he invited me to his garden, I came.

  59

  SHUVI, SHUVI HA-SHULAMIT

  What do you think happens next? I asked, stretched over Benny. On the wall of my room, Ahmad’s painting of Shira the Shulamite.

  I’d say that’s up to you, Benny said, smoothing my hair. You know what I want.

  I had to laugh.

  I was thinking about Romei, I said, his story. What happens next? He ends it, what, nine years ago?

  I’m more interested in our story.

  Right, I said. Why don’t I get us something to drink?

  No, he said, restraining me with his arms. I want you here. Please don’t go.

  Okay. Well. Okay, I said, and rested my head on his chest. Shit! I said. What word did Romei use to describe the red nightgown? Did he say sanguigno? He was comparing me to Beatrice, when Dante first sees her, a child in crimson. I have to check!

  In the morning, Benny said.

  Right, I said. It’s not important—thinking that Romei had again described me as innocent, untouched, only now it was the adult Shira he described in this way, the thirty-five-year-old author-of-the-story Shira, despairing Shira, Shira who’d just left her husband and had no idea who she was and what she wanted, who believed in nothing except this quaint idea that she might write—it was this Shira he described as innocent, not the girl who’d dan
ced for a boy in her high school chem lab.

  How could he have been so sure?

  Whatever I was now, I was further than ever from that girl—right? Walking a tightrope between rage and self-revelation, holding at arm’s length a wonderful man who might or might not crush me like a grape, unsure how to love my daughter, forever pulling and pushing at my friends as if they were yo-yos. My mother on her death bed, and I with nothing to offer, no comfort, no consolation, my arms closed tight against her like a child, protecting myself from what? A hurt that was finished but still real, still a part of me after nearly forty years?

  Do you think there’s a kernel of innocence inside us? I whispered.

  An inner Shulamite?

  I guess.

  Shuvi, shuvi ha-Shulamit, Benny said. That’s the beginning of the epigraph Romei gave your story. The translation he cites renders this as Again, O Shulamite, dance again. But literally it means Return, return, O Shulamite. Phrased in the imperative.

  Return in the sense …

  In the sense of t’shuvah. Return through repentance.

  Is that what you think? Repent and ye shall be saved?

  Come back from the place of error, return to your self. That’s what I tell my flock.

  You think it’s there still, inside me.

  The flying girl? I can see her.

  I don’t. I don’t see her.

  Dance for me, Shulamite, Benny whispered. Let me see you dancing.

  You’re kidding.

  Benny shook his head.

  I want to watch you dancing.

  I can’t. Don’t ask me to do that.

  Someday. Then you’ll know she’s still there.

  I looked at him. I wouldn’t be afraid, he must have known that, I couldn’t let myself be afraid. Romei was right: I would always read the telegram. I disengaged myself, stood before my lover, naked. My character Rosaria had agreed to dance for her husband, but his purpose had been shame. Dancing in shame was not the way. I found Benny’s eyes in the half-light; he smiled, I closed my eyes, began to move. I swayed to music I remembered from a room that smelled of formaldehyde: Santana, Hendrix, Joan Baez at Woodstock, a guitar riff licking my skin. And before me, T., his eyes filled not with lust but with love, as if I’d misread him, or maybe those were Benny’s eyes. I lifted my arms and swirled, and dropped my head back, as the rhythm hitched itself to my hips and gathered in my thighs with the pounding of my heart, the blood rushing through my body, my innocent body, into my arms and breasts … Swirling, my arms uplifted, I felt myself rise, wings extended above me, covering me, all of my characters, all of me, Elena, the scared child, Cora, the heartbroken mother, the Shulamite, joyfully wanton, Salomé, bitter and vengeful, Rosaria, ashamed and ill-used, Janey, remorseful and supplicant, Rose, naïve and lost, the wings of an eagle spanning the decades, protecting me, lifting me, all of me. And Benny was there, pulling me toward my center, his fingers tracing my backbone, the web that connects us, his hands on my hips, pulling me toward him. Still dancing, I moved my hips around his, I moved my hips and sang. For some reason, I began to sing.

  EPILOGUE

  “In that part of our book of memory, before which little can be read, we find, under the heading The New Life Begins, the words I have transcribed here, in this little, this libelous book. Incipit vita nova.” So says Dante.

  That part before which little can be read—you know that part of my book better than anyone. The part before the beginning, when even you believed in new life.

  Through events remarkable and unexpected, I have learned something of that story. I offer it to you here—the beginning, as I understand it; the middle, as I’ve lived it. The ending remains to be seen—I hope we can write it together.

  •

  Ahmad went to Pakistan, as promised. When the uncles didn’t allow him into their house, he shouted his sons’ names—their names, his name, the name of his hotel, the fact that he loved them and would always love them, shouted until an uncle, mortified, punched him in the jaw. One of his sons, Amir, the second oldest, came to his hotel. Afraid, but not afraid enough. Too early to know what will come of this, but Ahmad is different now, he’s softer.

  He tried to find Shamseh, the girl with the Internet portal, discovered she didn’t exist.

  The millennium is with us and the world did not end. Millions of pilgrims will go to Rome this year, millions of romei seeking indulgence. I owe Romei a great deal—you now know how much. Maybe he deserves indulgence, for his tremendous act of love.

  What will the millennium bring? No apocalypse, but change, as they say, is afoot. Benny and I have agreed not to discuss marriage until spring. Don’t tell anyone, but when he asks again, I think I’ll say yes. No guarantee that he’s changed, or that I’ve changed, no guarantee that we’ll be safe with each other, but I want to be near him, I want to be seen forever by those kind hazel eyes. In the meantime, I’m working at the bookstore—I manage it, actually, as Benny works on Gilgul. There’s been great interest in the translation Benny published last month, as you probably know.

  We’re still in the Den. Andi’s settled into her new life, more resilient than we knew. Hopeful about Amir, Ahmad has made an offer on a house. He plans to bring Andi there on weekends; she’s aware she might meet a brother there. I can join them, if I want—there’s room, there will always be room. It’s going to work out, I truly believe this: our new life.

  So what is this new life?

  Romei helped me understand. Celan’s chasm cannot be crossed, there is no true translation, no absolute fidelity. I still think this. And yet, miraculously, it can be, there is, and there is. We experience the new life in glimmers, I think, in moments when we apprehend the possibility of new life. When we choose to love through our innocent selves, and not just our damaged parts. When we love through what hurts us, when we step willingly into shalhevetyah, love’s great flame, knowing we won’t be alone. Or leap into the void, knowing that despite the emptiness that lies between us, we can sometimes find our way, all the way, to each other. Then change, real change, becomes possible.

  If you’ve read this far, you know all there is to know about me, I’ve opened my heart to you like a flower, I am your flying girl. Your silence mystifies me, I can’t pretend it does not. It makes me realize what Romei knew all along, that forgiveness is in the eye of the beholder. Nice if the offender can account for herself—confess, be contrite, make reparations, change. Nice if we can put ourselves in the offender’s shoes, as if she were a character in fiction: recognize her humanity, identify with her, empathically imagine our way to forgiveness. But ultimately, forgiveness begins not in the intentions of the offender, but the heart of the offended.

  Benny tried to teach me this, but I had to learn it for myself. Some offenses are unforgivable, others will not be confessed: we can’t always wait for penance. Sometimes we have no choice but to step into the flame. We know this, you and I, because we know how it is to close our heart around a hurt. I remember you, Mother, I remember that you once loved my father, I remember that once you loved me.

  I’ve opened my heart to you, you know all there is to know about me. This is my offering, you have me, I am yours. It’s not the same as forgiveness, but I have leapt into the chasm, I have walked into the flame; I hope to meet you halfway.

  Our flight, Alitalia 515, arrives on Thursday, 7 a.m.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Translations from the Italian are my own; in translating La Vita Nuova, I occasionally referred to Mark Musa’s translation (Oxford University Press, 1992) and, more often, to that of Barbara Reynolds (Penguin Books, 1969). My reading of La Vita Nuova was shaped by those translations as well as by Robert Pogue Harrison’s The Body of Beatrice (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988). Dorothy Sayers’ introduction to Purgatory (Penguin Books, 1955) is responsible for my understanding of Dante’s three-part ‘technology’ for repentance (which is itself derived, Sayers tells us, from St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa).

  In
writing about Romei’s penna, I relied on Osip Mandelstam’s “Conversation about Dante” (reprinted in The Poets’ Dante: Twentieth-Century Responses, Peter S. Hawkins and Rachel Jacoff, eds. [Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001]), which speaks of Dante’s bird/flying imagery, the feather, and the feather pen, as well as John Freccero’s Introduction to Robert Pinsky’s translation of the Inferno (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994), which associates penne, wings, and birds with both poetic inspiration and carnal love. Shira’s Nabokov quotation concludes his essay “ ‘Onegin’ in English,” which can be found in The Translation Studies Reader (Lawrence Venuti, ed. [Routledge, 2000]); her understanding of the translative act (as bringing the translator back to the original moments of a poet’s creation) is derived in part from that of Paul Valéry, as presented in his essay “Variations on the Eclogues,” as well as that of Yves Bonnefoy, as discussed in his essay “Translating Poetry” (both reprinted in Theories of Translation, Rainer Schulte and John Biguenet, eds. [University of Chicago Press, 1992]).

  All translations from the Latin are taken from Reynolds. The translation of the Celan line (from “Soviel Gestirne,” from the collection Die Niemandsrose) is mine, though I referred to Michael Hamburger’s translation in Paul Celan: Poems (Persea Books, 1980). I relied on several translations of the Song of Songs when translating various lines and when imagining Esther and Benny’s co-translation. Among these are the King James Version but also those of Marvin H. Pope (Doubleday, 1977), Marcia Falk (HarperCollins, 1993), and most notably, Ariel Bloch and Chana Bloch (University of California Press, 1995). The sources of Romei’s English translations of the charming chiasmus and the Shulamite epigraph from the Song of Songs are noted in the text. My reading of the Song was strongly influenced by the Bloch Introduction and Commentary and the beautiful Robert Alter Afterword to that edition, as well as Marcia Falk’s Translator’s Note.

  In writing this book, I was the recipient of extraordinary generosity. I give thanks, in alphabetical order, to the following residencies, conferences, and grant-giving institutions, which allowed me blessed time and space in which to write: Atlantic Center for the Arts, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Hawthornden International Retreat for Writers, the Leeway Foundation, the MacDowell Colony (where this book was born), Millay Colony for the Arts, Ragdale Foundation, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Ucross Foundation, Fundación Valparaíso, the Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Corporation of Yaddo. Many friends read portions of the book; special thanks to Philip McFarland, Robin Black, Patricia Chao, and Elizabeth Cantor for reading the whole and offering definitive assistance. Thanks also to Jim Crace for helping me understand just who Shira was and to Lynn Freed, Margot Livesey, and Erin McGraw, who offered terrific advice about the book’s first chapters. Shira herself was born as a result of a seminar on the Song of Songs led by Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, z”l; thanks to the former Elat Chayyim Jewish Retreat Center for making such learning possible.