She was weeping. Omar reached out and took her hand. He pulled her close to him and held her. “It seems just the opposite to me,” he said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Deirdre wrote to Omar in Toronto care of his parents, but never heard back from him. Her one-year position at Bucknell was extended for two more years, and then once again for a fourth and final year. So she began to look for other jobs, and since a chapter from her dissertation (“Rose Macaulay, Penelope Mortimer, Nina Bawden: The Fiction of Gender, the Gender of Fiction”) had been published in PMLA, the offers for interviews were numerous. In January she went to New York City to interview at Barnard. After the interview she had lunch with two professors; they bid her goodbye on the street corner. She had an hour or two to kill before her train departed and asked them if there was a decent bookstore around.
They directed her to a store called Labyrinth, which sold mainly university press books, and she spent a happy hour browsing through its shelves. She was about to leave when the title of a book on one of the remainder tables caught her eye: To Go No Farther: Elizabeth Bishop’s Years in Brazil by Omar Razaghi. It was a little, ugly paperback book: black letters on a solid mustard-colored cover, published by the University of New Mexico Press. She picked up a copy and read the blurb on the back:
This book, number 13 in our series on 20th-Century South American Writers, examines the years Elizabeth Bishop lived in Brazil and the work she produced there. Through keen literary analysis of her poetry and translations, and a deft re-creation of her life in Brazil, Razaghi makes a compelling case for Bishop to be considered a writer of the Southern Hemisphere. Here is a new look at Bishop, as an author who found a home and voice far from her native shores.
20th-Century South American Writers is edited by Diogenes González-Barahona and Susan Shreve Shepard as part of the University of New Mexico’s South American Literature Studies Program.
OMAR RAZAGHI was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1969 and emigrated to Canada in 1979. He has a B.A. in History from York University and an M.A. in Literature from the University of Kansas, where he was awarded the Dolores Faye and Bertram Siebert Petrie Award for Biographical Studies, based upon his work on Jules Gund. Razaghi lives in Uruguay with his wife and two daughters, Portia and Adela.
Deirdre looked at the dedication: To Arden. She bought five copies—they were only $1.98 each.
Deirdre got the job at Barnard and moved to New York. The following winter a man she met at a Tai Chi class invited her to the opera (Les contes d’Hoffmann). The second intermission found them leaning against the Dress Circle balustrade, looking down upon the crowded Grand Tier promenade, discussing the sexual politics of trouser roles. There was an area below them separated off with a row of potted trees, beyond which people sat on conspicuous display at little tables idiotically eating desserts. Deirdre was about to make a comment about the absurd ostentation of this, when she thought she recognized a woman seated at one of the tables.
“I think I know that woman down there,” she said. “I want to go and say hello. Will you excuse me?”
“Sure,” said her companion. “I’m going to the men’s room. I’ll meet you back at our seats.”
“Okay,” said Deirdre. She hastened down the crimson curving tunnel of stairs to the level below, and made her way through the throng toward the makeshift restaurant. By the time she pushed herself through the crowd, the woman was getting up from the table, leaving a man behind, walking toward her. For a moment Deirdre thought the woman had recognized her, but then she realized she had not. Deirdre stepped closer as the woman passed her and said, “Excuse me, are you Caroline Gund?”
The woman stopped and looked at Deirdre. She was wearing a long black skirt and lilac-colored watered silk blouse that tied in a huge bow on one of her hips. Her hair was gray now, but still long and elegantly styled. She wore a necklace of hammered silver leaves and matching earrings. “Yes,” she said, “I am.”
“I’m Deirdre MacArthur,” said Deirdre. “Do you remember me? I met you several years ago, at Ochos Rios. I was there with Omar Razaghi.”
Caroline smiled and held out her hand. “Deirdre, yes, of course. How are you?”
“I’m fine,” said Deirdre. “I saw you from up there”—she turned and pointed to the gallery above them—“and I just wanted to say hello.”
“Are you enjoying the opera?” asked Caroline.
“Yes,” said Deirdre, “very much. How are things in Ochos Rios?” It sounded like that song: “How Are Things in Glocca Morra?”
“I wouldn’t know,” said Caroline. “I live here now. I moved here several years ago. Shortly after you visited us, in fact.” Caroline carried a little bag, beaded with black jets. She turned it over in her hands.
“Have you read Omar’s book?”
“Omar wrote a book?”
“Yes,” said Deirdre. “About Elizabeth Bishop in Brazil.”
“I haven’t seen it,” said Caroline.
“It’s quite good,” said Deirdre.
Caroline said nothing. She was looking at her bag.
“And apparently he’s living down there. He’s married Arden.”
“Yes, I had heard something like that,” said Caroline.
“You aren’t in touch with them?”
Caroline looked up and smiled. “No,” she said, “I am not in touch with them. And how are you? Are you still teaching in—where is it? Nebraska?”
“Kansas,” said Deirdre. “No, I’m here in New York. At Barnard. So you don’t go back to Ochos Rios?”
“No,” said Caroline. “I’ve remarried. My life is here now.”
“Are you still painting?” asked Deirdre.
“No,” said Caroline. “No, I don’t paint.” She made a gesture with her hand, as if she were brushing away smoke. “I’m afraid you will have to excuse me. I was on my way to the ladies’ room and you know how awful the lines are, and I don’t want to miss the barcarolle—”
“Of course,” said Deirdre. “I just wanted to say hello. It’s nice to see you.”
“Lovely to see you,” said Caroline, “enjoy the rest of the opera.” She pressed Deirdre’s hand, and then disappeared into the crowd.
Deirdre went out on the balcony, where people stood about, shivering and smoking. Even though it was freezing, the fountain at the center of the plaza was perfunctorily founting, and a bright, steamy halo surrounded it. She watched the steam tumble up into the darkness, disappear.
Caroline’s husband stood up as she passed by him. After she sat down he leaned over and arranged her shawl around her shoulders. She had put on perfume; he could smell it. He leaned closer and inhaled, kissed her cheek. She smiled, but she was looking straight ahead, implacably, at the gold curtain.
“Who was that? The girl you were talking to?”
“Oh,” said Caroline. “No one. She mistook me for someone she knew.”
Deirdre returned to her seat. She found a tissue in her coat pocket and blew her nose. Her companion took her hand. “You’re freezing,” he said.
“I went outside,” said Deirdre. “It’s cold.”
“Here,” he said. He took both her hands in his. He had large, warm hands. He squeezed her hands between his. “Who was that woman?”
“It was a woman I met when I was in Uruguay,” said Deirdre.
“Uruguay? When where you in Uruguay?”
“A few years ago,” said Deirdre. “Well, five years ago. Almost exactly.”
“What were you doing in Uruguay?”
Deirdre shook her head.
“Tell me,” he said.
“Oh,” said Deirdre, “it’s a long story.”
“Tell me,” he said again.
She opened her mouth to speak, but the dimming lights silenced her. The conductor appeared and was applauded. He raised his arms, and the music began.
ALSO BY PETER CAMERON
One Way or Another
Leap Year
Far-flung
&nb
sp; The Weekend
The Half You Don’t Know
Andorra
Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You
Peter Cameron is the author of several novels, including Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You and Andorra. He lives in New York City.
THE CITY OF YOUR FINAL DESTINATION. Copyright © 2002 by Peter Cameron.
All rights reserved. For information,
address Picador, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
The author wishes to express his gratitude to Andrew Cameron, James Harms, Edward Swift, Irene Skolnick, John Glusman, the MacDowell Colony, and the Corporation of Yaddo.
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A portion of this novel originally appeared in The Yale Review
First published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Designed by Jonathan D. Lippincott
eISBN 9781429927154
First eBook Edition : March 2011
The Library of Congress has cataloged the
Farrar, Straus and Giroux edition as follows:
Cameron, Peter, 1959–
The city of your final destination / Peter Cameron.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-374-28197-7
1. Biography as an art form—Fiction. 2. Americans—Uruguay—Fiction. 3. Graduate students—Fiction. 4. Biographers—Fiction. 5. Uruguay—Fiction. 6. Kansas—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3553.A4344 C58 2002
813’.54—dc21
2001051127
Picador ISBN 978-0-312-65654-6
First Picador Edition: September 2010
The City of Your Final Destination Page 29
