Claudia grabbed her arm. Seriously, is that him?
Ana nodded. What are the chances? she said. Of all the trains, just think.
That’s got to be a sign, said Claudia, clapping excitedly. Ooh, you’re written in the stars.
Daniel was traveling first class, but he greeted Ana in the dining car. He invited her for a sandwich, and for the next hour they sat there as Romania whizzed by. He told her he was bisexual, he was an artist, he came from Bistriţa, had traveled all through Europe, was twenty-five years old, that his phone number was seven-seven-one-zero-one-nine, and that he liked Max Ernst. He said he’d call Ana when he got back to Bucharest. They could have a cup of tea.
Why do you think he said all that? yelled Ana over the music at a karaoke bar in Cluj that evening.
No idea, yelled Claudia. But my God, he’s gorgeous.
The next morning they nursed their hangovers at a café behind the museum. Ana could get nothing down. She excused herself, saying she might as well get it over with, and crossed the square, past the statue and the flock of tourists, through the streets, until she reached the faculty building. She checked the address and photograph one more time, stepped through the first door, and asked the way to Paul Pintea’s office. A secretary gave her directions: up the stairs and down the long hallway, first door on the left. Yes, there was Paul’s surname on the door, and she knocked hurriedly before she could think twice. A chair creaked behind the door, a drawer was closed and cups shifted around. She heard steps. The door opened.
Paul, or a man who looked like Paul, stared at her. His eyes were the same, but he was fatter and balder, his cheeks slumped toward his chin like they were melting.
Can I help you with something?
Yeah, you’re Paul, aren’t you? I think you knew my father, Ciprian Ivan.
For a moment he gazed at her. Then his face split into a laugh.
Ah, Ana! God, is that really you? Last time I saw you, you were just a little thing. And now look at you. I mean, those curves, those curves.
He laughed again, waving her into the office and asking what she was doing in Cluj. Ana told him something about a study trip, and he pulled out a chair for her and sat down behind his desk.
Math at the academy, eh? Well, can’t say it’s all that surprising.
Ana blushed. No, I guess it isn’t.
But it’s good, said Paul. It’s how it should be. If you’ve got your father’s blood in your veins you’ll be one hell of a mathematician.
Ana smiled, Paul nodded, and for a moment both were silent. Then she took out her notebook, keen to get to the point, but she felt muffled in the niceties, she didn’t know how to say the words. Paul nodded, as though he could hear her thoughts.
Was there anything in particular I can help you with? he said. Or are you just here to say hi? Needless to say, you’re always welcome.
Yes, there is something, actually, she said. It’s a bit silly, but since I’m in town I thought, well. You were good friends with my dad. Weren’t you?
The best, the closest. Like a molecule, you know.
That’s what I thought. When my dad—well, when he died, he didn’t leave a note. And I thought, since you were friends, maybe you knew something about why he did it?
Paul nodded, his gaze flitting around the room. It leaped from the desk to the bookshelves, and Ana tried in vain to catch his eye.
Ana, he said. Your father was a very talented mathematician. And he loved you very much.
Then he cleared his throat, got to his feet, and took a step away from the desk.
You know what, he said. Why don’t we have a cup of coffee? Let’s just have a little cup.
Ana nodded, but before she could stand up he was over by her chair, helping her up and bundling her out of the office, grabbing her bag as he went and closing the door behind them. She understood none of what was going on, but Paul was sweating and tugging at his collar like it was a summer’s day. In the teachers’ lounge Paul filled cups with coffee, found sugar and milk, and when they sat down on the sofa it was like the air leaked out of him, his body sagging like a block of Neapolitan ice cream, melted yet still upright, all soft and airy and made of powdered milk, collapsing onto the sofa.
Well. Yes, Ciprian, he said. Yes, it was certainly an awkward business with your father.
Ana nodded.
The other day, she said, I started thinking about that time at the restaurant in Bucharest. I wasn’t very old, but you got into an argument, you and my dad. And I was wondering whether it had something to do with his dissertation.
You mean, what? Did he hang himself because of his dissertation?
Maybe, yes. It was rejected, and my aunt says it was because of the Institute that he did it.
Paul flapped his hand.
Your father was a very ambitious man, no doubt about that. But he never let himself be beaten down. Hang himself on account of some crappy dissertation? Never!
Paul set the coffee cup on the table. He said: No. If you only knew how many blows that man could take. Every single time they knocked him down he picked himself up again. I’ve no idea where he got it from.
So it wasn’t because of the dissertation?
Jesus, no. He was like that boxer, what’s his name? The one in the movie?
Paul punched his fists into the air, chuckling to himself, but then his cheeks sank again, and the timbre of his voice seemed to fade.
But, yes, that was then, of course, when we were young. Before I moved to Cluj.
What happened after you moved?
Yes, what happened then. I don’t know. We didn’t talk for several years. And when I saw him again, well, I’m not sure. He wasn’t the person I knew.
Ana nodded. She wanted to ask whether her father had been depressed or sick, whether he was on drugs or sleeping pills, whether he was an agent or spying on the government, but then Paul got up and drew the blinds. Outside the sun had disappeared behind the mountains, a bluish light lay across the parking lot, and a tour bus pulled up. The headlights shone into the lounge, the bus stopped by the curb, the doors opened, and people tumbled out onto the street. Sweaters were taken off and put on, jackets removed from bags, and a flash cut through the twilight.
Ugh, just look at them, Paul said. Damn Hungarians.
Yeah, said Ana. All those tourists.
But what the hell do they want here? That’s what I don’t get. There’s nothing here but misery and squalor.
Two days later, Ana and Claudia took the train home to Bucharest. In the compartment Ana wrote about her meeting with Paul, speculating about her father. She’d read the few remaining letters and postcards, but they told her nothing. She’d asked his friends and family, and now she’d run out of witnesses. As the train put the mountains behind it and trundled onto the Wallachian Plain, she slid the notebook aside and let it go. She stared out of the window at the fields, at the villages that stood like ghosts in the landscape, razed and resurrected through the endless succession of wars and empires that had swept across the country, the farms and the lives that had been lived there, and were forgotten, and of which not even a shadow remained.
Hey, why the long face, said Claudia. Aren’t you going to call that Daniel guy?
Yes, said Ana. That’s true.
Claudia nodded and took her hand. You know what I think? I think this spring is going to be big.
The fourth time Ana saw Daniel was at his apartment. They drank fruit tea and listened to music, and Daniel’s boyfriend was there too. His name was Sorin. He was a few years older, and a very beautiful man. Not in the ordinary sense; or, no, it was a classical beauty, but it was also a—what did Ana call it? An inner beauty sounds so dumb. Well, it doesn’t matter. It was a lovely day they spent together, Ana, Daniel, and Sorin. It was like they’d known one another for years, and Ana listened as the two men talked about Gide and Blaga and Tournier, and when it was time to leave they gave her The Glass Bead Game to take home in her bag.
Back in the apartment Carmen was waiting, and she said: Tell me.
Tell you what?
So, did he fuck you, or what?
Carmen! said Ana, shushing her. Mom can hear you.
But then she talked about Daniel and Sorin anyway, about the literature they’d discussed and the book she’d got in her bag. It might have sounded grand to her student’s mind, but Carmen wasn’t impressed.
So he’s got a boyfriend? she said. A male one?
Yeah, so what?
Maybe you should take a step back?
But did Ana take a step back, when Daniel called the next day and invited her out for a drink? Hardly. She said, Yes thanks, absolutely, I’d love to. She put on her high-heeled shoes and walked alone up Lipscani. Blowing on her fingers to warm them, wrapping her scarf more tightly around her neck. It was Friday evening, and it was happy hour. Ana bumped into drunk people’s elbows and hips, she shook as though with cold, and for a moment she hesitated at the door. Then she screwed up her courage and plunged into the cigarette smoke, set a course for the beer taps and caught sight of Daniel through the dark. He hadn’t seen her, and for some reason she felt no urge to draw his attention. He stood side-on, his features almost dissolving in the paper lanterns’ glow, but then he turned, and his eyes grew big and round, he drummed his fingers on the countertop, and suddenly he was standing in front of her, staring.
We can go back to mine, he said, when he’d ordered two beers.
And when they’d clinked glasses: You can sleep at my place, if you like.
And when he put his empty bottle on the table: I want to make love to you.
Ana looked down at the table, feeling her cheeks grow hot. Then she got up and found a payphone, called home, and said she was staying over at Claudia’s. By the time she got back, he’d already paid the bill, and they walked back to his apartment. They took off their clothes and stood there in the middle of the carpet, Ana wishing she could crawl under the covers. She felt somehow like putting on a sweater, or a blanket would be good; it was so cold in the apartment, and no man had ever seen her naked.
I’m freezing, she said.
Daniel nodded and went into the kitchen for vodka and glasses, cut sausages and pickles, and brought a piece of bread.
There’s no reason to be nervous, he said, when they were lying in bed. I’ve tried it loads of times before.
Then they clinked glasses, and he told her she’d be the nineteenth virgin he’d gone to bed with, and that he’d screwed a hundred and eighteen women and ninety-four men. He’d been a prostitute abroad, he said, because he needed the money, but he’d also saved some up. He kept talking, and the more he talked, the more vodka Ana poured down her throat, until at last she got so wrecked that for the next five years she was just as ignorant of the joys of sex as she’d been before she spread her legs for Daniel.
Why don’t you stay? said Daniel the next morning, when she woke up. You can move in, if you want.
Ana, fiddling with her underwear and pants, didn’t answer. She wanted to go home and have a bath, she wanted to go outside into the numbing air, she wanted clean clothes and something cold to drink. So they kissed goodbye, her tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth, her hair rumpled and greasy, her groin aching, everything smelling of smoke. On the bus she looked out at the Romani and their ragged children, at the homeless people, who’d had no contact with any water but the rain for weeks or months or years. She thought of Claudia and her other friends, who had boyfriends and had waited for the right one, and she thought of AIDS and genital warts and syphilis, and then the bus stopped at Valea Ialomiţei, and Ana plodded past the thrift shop and the dollar store, and everything almost went black. Then she reached Block A41, and when she opened the door to the apartment she was met by a doctor and two nurses, three neighbors, and a sobbing mother.
The doctor had said it was a question of days or weeks, that Carmen wouldn’t live to see the spring. That afternoon the apartment was besieged by relatives and neighbors. Housewives milled in the kitchen, bedclothes were scalded in the bathroom, candles lit around the dying woman in the front room. The funerary circus had been set in train, and Ana never got the chance to speak to Carmen properly. Many nights she held her hand while Carmen slipped in and out of a doze, opening her eyes from time to time, fearfully, and asking: Is it now, is it happening?
Ana clumsily stroked Carmen’s cheek, not knowing what to say. She told herself it was her duty to sit by Carmen’s sickbed, that she could handle it no problem, that it was the least she could do for her aunt. That was what she thought, Ana, but before two nights were out she was a zombie, a good old-fashioned nervous wreck. Did she sleep at night? Did she keep up with lectures? Did she remember to put her name down for the exam? Could she stop herself making long detours to Ghencea to clean her father’s gravestone, which by now had grown a slimy layer of moss? No, no, and no. One day she was woken in the cathedral by a giggling band of choirboys, and couldn’t remember how she’d gotten there. Another time she went to pay for her lunch at the Institute’s canteen, and the zipper on her wallet got stuck. You paying or not? said the lunch lady impatiently, and then Ana got stuck too, casting around in a panic and upturning the tray belonging to the man next to her, spilling coffee all over him.
Hysterical female, he shouted, you’re not the only person in the world, you know!
Two days after Carmen perished with a moan, Ana trudged all the way out to Ghencea Cemetery and jumped over the hedge. In the darkness all the graves were alike, and for a while she traipsed from column to column, baffled and chilled to the bone. When she finally found her father’s gravestone, she fell to her knees and laid her forehead against the cooling granite. Opening her eyes again, she saw a dog. It came trotting toward her, a scabby little communal stray. Lowering its head, it approached tentatively, snuffling at her shoes. For a delirious moment Ana thought it was a sign, an angel or something. But then she saw two other dogs come creeping out of the dark, and she scrambled up in fear and grabbed a stone. The dogs retreated slightly and Ana leaned against the gravestone, but just as she was about to turn she saw a fourth dog out of the corner of her eye, bony and more tattered than the others, limping out of the bushes, growling.
Go away, yelled Ana, kicking at it. It bared its teeth and drew back, and Ana fought for breath as everything began to spin. Go away, she sobbed, but the dogs came closer, their ears down. The tattered dog snapped at her, and when she kicked at it another one got hold of her pant leg. Ana screamed and flailed her arms, throwing her bag at them. The dogs leaped on the bag, tore and ripped at it, and in the confusion of the moment she crawled up onto the plinth. It was barely a meter high, and now the dogs were back, leaping around the grave and barking. They sprang up to reach her, snapping at her legs, their claws scrabbling at the granite, and Ana grabbed the marble cross and clung to it. Feeling something tug her ankle, she gripped the cross with all her strength, screamed, and thrashed her legs, and luckily a sexton heard the commotion. When he saw Ana he came running over, wielding a rake above his head. The dogs turned and barked but then retreated, first slinking backward, then at full speed. When the sexton was done yelling curses after all the goddamn communal strays in Bucharest, he helped Ana down from the grave.
What d’you think you’re doing? he said. We’re closed, for Christ’s sake, you must have a screw loose!
Ana crumpled into a heap beside the stone and sobbed, inconsolable.
Nervously, the sexton twitched his cap. Aw, come on now. Jesus, I didn’t mean it like that.
Ana gasped and gulped for air, and the sexton took her arm and walked her through the cemetery. He knocked on the door of the rectory, where the priest had just got back from mass.
What’s going on here? asked the priest, who was still in his robes.
This girl, she was attacked by some dogs. I found her up on a stone.
And?
Well, and I found her like this, all unhappy.
The priest looked
from the sexton to Ana, and then back again. Is she mute or what, can’t the girl speak?
It was my dad, stammered Ana, sniveling. I never got to say goodbye.
The priest sighed. Oh, alright. Fine, just let her come in.
Then Ana was given tea with milk and honey, and she was given a blanket. She sat in the priest’s front room, her teeth chattering, thawing out in the warmth of the stove, and suddenly it all came trickling out of her, nine years’ guilt seeping into the carpet. God, her father had hanged himself, and she didn’t know why. God, her aunt had died, and she’d been out fucking a gay male whore.
The priest nodded. He smoothed his beard. Ana was in the middle of telling him about her mother’s silence and her father’s burned dissertation when he interrupted.
May I ask you something, he said. Where do you live?
Ana stammered out her address, and the priest brightened.
Ah, Drumul Taberei, I thought you were new. He got to his feet, smiling for the first time. Do you know what I think? I think you should take the bus home and get a bit of shut-eye. Then, in the morning, go down to your own church. This isn’t even your district.
Ana sat where she was, staring at the priest.
My district?
Why yes, my dear, you have your own priest in Drumul Taberei. I know him, he’s excellent. Come on now. Off we go.
The priest took the blanket and helped Ana to her feet, bustling her out into the scullery. Ana was still confused, and as she put on her shoes the priest stood over her and watched her fumble with the laces. He said: By the way, you shouldn’t be wearing those pants.
Ana looked down at her jeans. What’s wrong with them?
Proper women don’t wear pants. You know that.
But everybody wears pants.
You listen to me. Pants are for men, and anything else is nonsense. It confuses people. You’re tempting men into homosexuality. Surely you realize that? Why else do you think we’ve got so many gays?
For a moment Ana stared at the priest. The dead eyes, the beard speckled with what might be bread crumbs, or maybe the white from a fried egg. Then she felt something she hadn’t felt for years, and she pointed at the priest’s legs.
The Invention of Ana Page 9
