Who are you to talk? You’re the one in a dress!
That night at the cemetery, something woke in Ana. I’m not sure what you’d call it. A man dreams about a distant cousin, and the next day he learns she died that night. A woman tells a story about a dead sparrow she saw as a child, and a moment later a bird crashes into the windowpane. A girl is surrounded by a pack of dogs, is forced to climb a tombstone, to cling to the cross of her father’s grave. It seemed a predestined confluence of symbols, of events: The sexton hardly ever saw dogs in Ghencea, certainly never in packs, and although it was late April and the reading rooms were bulging, Ana sat in her room and stared at her journal, trying to connect the dots and read the contours of the pattern, of the drawing that had to be glimmering somewhere between the lines.
Claudia got worried. She called every evening and asked if Ana was coming to the reading room the next day. And Ana wanted to go, but at breakfast or on the bus she’d begun to sweat, and in the streets around the train station a kind of itch would rise up her neck and tighten around her throat.
It’s hay fever, she said, when Claudia asked what was wrong.
She’d come up with excuses, saying she was going to the doctor or the library, that she’d forgotten a meeting with her mother. Her days passed at the market and in the parks, and hours might be spent on the most basic errands. She had to make a sandwich, but had nothing to put in it, then when she got back from the grocer’s she had to bake some bread. She gave her bedroom a quick once-over, but since she had the vacuum cleaner running she might as well give the living room a go, and the kitchen needed one too, and the bathroom could do with a proper scrub, while she was at it.
One day she needed new socks, but in the first store they were too expensive, in the second store they were too big, in the third they weren’t made of cotton, and when the sun abruptly fell behind the buildings she got breathless, running to the bus without any socks and cursing herself on the journey home. Another day had passed, and sweet fuck all had happened. Another week had passed, and still fuck all had happened.
One afternoon she was sitting in Nicolae Iorga Park, the foliage hanging neon green around her, and underneath the plane trees some students from the art school were holding court. She couldn’t see Daniel, but she saw Sorin, and he came over and asked how things were going. Ana lied and said things were great, and Sorin showed her a book about Joseph Beuys, and for a while they flicked through the pages, while she interpreted or guessed what the works meant. Sorin was particularly interested in a performance where Beuys had lived in a gallery for three days with a wild coyote, brandishing a cane and playing the triangle while wrapped from head to toe in felt. Ana had never heard of anything so weird, but it was a beautiful image. There was something strangely intriguing about the coyote and dark-felted figure, and Ana told Sorin about the dogs in the cemetery, and how she’d clung to the gravestone.
Isn’t it strange? said Ana. Do you think it was a sign?
Sorin shrugged. You think it was a sign? Then it probably was.
Three days later, Ana tried to go back to the Institute. This time she made it all the way through the gate, forcing herself along the corridors and sneaking into the middle of a lecture. In the hall she paused to find Claudia. At first she couldn’t see her, but then she caught sight of her in the dusty light, sitting in one of the back rows and scribbling in a notebook. Ana was about to go over, but she stopped for a moment and watched her friend—eyes turned avidly toward the blackboard, tongue greedily licking her lips—and it was then that Ana realized she’d never be a mathematician. In one of those clear moments novels are made of, Ana suddenly understood that she didn’t belong at the Institute, that she didn’t have math in her bones, that it was worse, in fact: that she was nothing but a little girl with a table-tennis paddle, sitting on a tree stump and waiting for her dad.
Backing out of the lecture hall, gripped by an overwhelming urge to pee, Ana turned and ran along the corridor, and for several hours she roamed the streets, her geometry compendium and book of formulae weighing heavily in her hands. She thought of her father’s suicide, of the dogs at his grave, and late that afternoon she reached the bus stop at Militari. She stood there for a while, gazing at a trash can. A communal stray stood on its hind legs, its head buried in the garbage, chewing at a plastic bag, and Ana gave a deep sigh. It hadn’t been a sign. It was a random pack of dogs, her father’s grave was a granite block, and everything they’d told her at the Institute was lies. The world wasn’t systematic or coherent, life didn’t consist of cause and effect. Then the bus arrived, the passengers flocked through its doors, and the dog limped away with its spoils.
You getting on? yelled the driver, above the idling motor.
Ana looked up from the trash can. She nodded. Then she dumped her books on top of the discarded newspapers, the wrappers and bottles and cigarette filters headed for the landfills that surround Bucharest, for the smoldering fires that dissolve everything into air or wind or that smoky breeze that blows through the city late at night, and with two shuffling steps she boarded the bus.
That week Ana cleared the decks. She packed up her compendiums and deregistered at the Institute, tearing down her Kasparov poster with no quibbling from her family. Her mother seemed almost relieved, in fact, and her grandma crossed herself and thanked the Virgin Mary.
Deliver us from mathematics, she laughed, and all its misdeeds.
Not long afterward, the matriarchs packed their bags and decamped for the summer cabin. Ana didn’t feel like joining them. She preferred to stay in town and hang out with her friends. But one week later, when exams were over and Claudia went to stay with her grandparents in Sighişoara, Ana was bored to tears. She lay in bed and tried to imagine her future, but her thoughts refused to coalesce. She didn’t know what she’d be doing after the summer vacation, and to block it out she read novels and took long walks, getting so desperate at last that she defied her mother’s warnings and called Bogdan in London. He didn’t pick up, and one afternoon she went down to the art school and asked cautiously about Daniel.
Daniel? said Sorin. Haven’t seen him in months.
Sorin asked if she’d like to come to an opening, and Ana had nothing better to do. He grabbed his bag and a few beers, and together they trudged over to the UAP, where Ana was introduced to the other art students. Later that evening they went to a bar, and the next day Sorin invited her to lunch. Afterward they sat in the park and spent a whole day dissecting their experiences with Daniel, and bit by bit Ana’s summer passed. There were poetry readings with the art-school crew and lectures at the German cultural institute, but mostly they just hung out, and when Sorin disappeared into a car with some guy or other, Ana sat with his friends and tried to decrypt their banter. She knew nothing about art, but slowly a whole new language opened up for her, a nomenclature of theories, practices, and crit sessions, biennials, magazines, and studio visits, artists she’d never heard of and words she’d never used. The art world was just as complex as mathematics. Even more so, in a sense, because its etiquette demanded on the one hand a feverish kind of activism, and on the other a bored disregard; because there were things you had to do but mustn’t mention; and because Ana soon found out you couldn’t simply ask: So what exactly is social practice, anyway?
That summer she met feminists and deconstructivists, and for the first time in her life she was asked to talk about herself—downright encouraged, in fact. Initially it was unpleasant, but one day Sorin’s crit group wanted to hear the whole story about the dunes and the anthill, and afterward one of the teachers came over and asked if she’d considered applying. As they were walking home that afternoon, Sorin asked her if she’d ever want to.
What, apply?
Yeah, man, they’re crazy about you.
But I’m not an artist. I’m a mathematician, my whole family are mathematicians. What would I make art about?
I don’t know, do like the rest of us. Scratch around in the trauma,
dive into the muck.
But Sorin, I’ve already done that.
Then you’d better dive deeper, get further into the grime. All the way down to your family demons.
Sorin, listen to what I’m telling you. I’ve already done that. I know everything about my dad.
Okay, he said. But what about your mom?
They continued down the bare street, putting trees and alleyways behind them, while Sorin talked about his own mother, her alcoholism and loneliness, which he’d been so ashamed of when he was a boy. Ana said nothing. For as long as Sorin could remember, he said, he’d been a mommy’s boy, a shivering homosexual nervous wreck, but what had been a weakness at school was the reverse at the art academy. There it was better to be a reject, a gypsy, or a homosexual; there you fit in if you had a diagnosis, if you were a little unhinged around the edges, a little borderline maybe.
You’ve got to have chaos inside you to give birth to a dancing star, said Sorin. Know what I mean?
Ana could hardly hear him above the traffic, but she nodded anyway. There were no shadows on the boulevard, and the heat thudded upward from the molten asphalt, but oddly it seemed like Sorin was enjoying the walk. He must have seen Ana growing paler, the patches of sweat expanding beneath her armpits, but he kept on talking about the torturous coddling and smothering attention his mom had put him through, and the smile never left his face. Ana listened until she could cope no longer. Coming to a halt at a bus stop, she said a hasty goodbye and leaped onto the bus. As she was letting herself into the apartment block, she bumped into her mother. Sweetheart, her mother said, what’s wrong? What do you mean, said Ana, what could be wrong? I don’t know, said her mother. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.
Ana stared at her. A ghost?
Her mother dropped her gaze. Then she picked up her shopping bag, and as soon as she’d rounded the corner to the market Ana dashed up to the apartment and into her mother’s bedroom. In the wardrobe she found the hatbox, the one with her mother’s knickknacks and mementos. Taking it into her own room, she shut the door and braced a chair in front of it, then she leafed through the scrapbook clippings, the envelopes of photos. She saw pictures of her mother at the tile factory’s offices, or clad all in white on a terrace in Dorobanti. She found a childhood diary in her mother’s handwriting, her old slide rule. It was wrapped in black cloth in a leather case, and Ana took it out and held it in her hand like a scepter. The bright wood was inlaid with a shiny metal, the look of a revelation as the pale instrument emerged from all that darkness. Ana delved down into the hatbox again, and at the bottom she found a plastic folder. It lay buried under a pile of tax returns, and when she opened it her birth certificate tumbled out onto the carpet. She’d never seen it before, and now she picked it up and studied it. It was neatly filled out in bluish cursive and stamped with the emblem of a Ceaușescu ministry, and there was something oddly nostalgic about finding herself in an obsolete document, a registration number in a disused database. Ana was about to jot down that thought when she discovered a second sheet. Years of pressure had stuck it firmly to the back of the birth certificate—a rougher piece of paper, nearly falling apart. It must have been wet at some point, and Ana struggled to tell one word from another. Only when she realized that it was in French could she make out what was written on it: her own name and that of her parents, and a church in Morocco.
That evening they ate dinner with the radio on.
By the way, said Ana, I think I found my birth certificate today. Two different copies.
Ana doesn’t remember what her mother answered—it was nothing special—and they washed up and left each other to their own devices. But the final scene from that evening she’ll never forget. When she came out of the bathroom, her mother was standing by the window in the streetlamp’s glow. She looked pretty, standing there half-turned toward the pane, as though the light were shrouding her, and Ana took a step into the room, then halted. There was something about the way her mother fiddled with the birth certificate between her fingers. She stood like a cold storage on a night when the power’s gone out, a creaking, dripping hall of pallet racks, full of boxes thawing.
Ana, she said. There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.
III
It was long past midnight when I left Ana’s studio. We never did make it to the editor’s birthday party, and as I biked home through the silent streets I felt light, emptied of thoughts, even if it had been a strange conclusion to a long and peculiar day. Ana had told me about her time in high school and her brief career as a mathematician, she’d chatted, gotten sidetracked and rambled for hours, but then suddenly she’d gathered the mugs and stood up and told me she had to get back to work. Did she say goodbye before disappearing down the stairs? If she did, I didn’t notice. For a while I stayed sitting on the roof, waiting, but when she didn’t come back after half an hour I got up and trudged down to the street.
Over the following days I pondered everything that had happened at Ana’s studio, and the more I turned it over in my mind, the less I understood it. I’d seen my short story, translated, in Ana’s folder, yet she’d denied knowing of it. She’d told me the most intimate details of her life, yet she’d stood up abruptly and left without explanation. None of it made sense. Each action was in conflict with the previous one. I had no idea what she wanted with me, but it didn’t disappoint or annoy me. That was probably how it was supposed to be, I thought, that was probably how artists lived, in conflict with themselves and all the world around them. Who needed predictability? Who cared about order and regularity? I had a friend in New York, I had a story to write, and that was all that mattered.
Still, I couldn’t help wondering about the translated short story, and on Sunday morning, when I was out on a bike ride, I swung by my brother’s place to ask his advice. It was a surprise to find him in. He sounded hoarse over the intercom, and at first I thought I’d woken him up, but upstairs he was sitting at his desk in the apartment, buried in paperwork, his hair damp and freshly washed, his eyes red, although he seemed pleased to see me. As I made omelets, I told him about my evening on Ana’s rooftop, and about the short story I’d found in the folder. Now and again he nodded or made a comment, and I asked if he could figure out why Ana was telling me all these personal details.
She probably needs to vent, he said. You know, offload on you.
I nodded—it did seem likely—but why me, of all people, a total stranger she’d barely met? If there were words she had to get off her chest, if she wanted to confess her sins, if she needed to stitch together all the meaninglessness with some kind of thread, some story that made sense of the jumble of events and episodes that constituted her life, then why was I the one hearing it?
Because no one else will listen? said my brother.
Okay, but then what about the story? Why go to all the trouble of finding it online, translating it, and printing it out? What does she want with it?
She’s probably just curious, he said, and he asked about Ana’s body clock and how things were going with The Time Traveler, but as soon as there was food on his plate he fell silent, munching with a vacant look in his eyes. He got up to brew some coffee, and as he waited for the water to boil he told me about a performance artist in the eighties who’d lived for six months in a small cage, totally cut off from the outside world. I didn’t understand where he was going with the story, and he kept stammering and hesitating, dropping the thread. Frankly, he didn’t look too good.
You got that right, he said. I’m trashed.
He splashed some water on his face and came back with his coffee. He didn’t have a dishcloth, and the water dripped down his forehead, cheeks and chin. He said: I slept with three women yesterday. In twenty-four hours. Then he sighed and paused for a moment. No, seventeen hours. What’s up with that?
I didn’t know what was up, but my brother did, and he told me about the three women, and how fateful the whole thing had seemed. He’d begun in the morning in
Ridgewood with the sculptor he was seeing, who was so sweet and so sensitive her eyes misted over whenever she saw a dead pigeon or rat. In the evening he’d had dinner with an art critic, and afterward they’d gone back to her place for a drink. Before long they ended up naked on the floor in front of the wardrobe, which was a bad idea, because the wardrobe had mirrored doors and the critic clearly didn’t like seeing her naked body, or maybe it was my brother’s naked body she didn’t like seeing, but either way she kept wriggling and slithering away from the mirror, which made it impossible to finish. Later they went out again, but the critic quickly got drunk off her head, and while she danced around with a bunch of people she knew, my brother met an MFA student, an aspiring digital artist at the bar. By that time the critic barely knew which way was up, so my brother went home with the artist, splitting a cab. He’d been too wasted to notice where they were driving, and it wasn’t until he was on his knees on her mattress, his penis inside her, that he glanced out of the window and realized where he was: directly opposite the sculptor’s apartment. He could see her orange curtains, the dense yellow light from her standing lamp, her long, slender shadow pacing up and down in the window, and for a moment he stopped thrusting and kept still. He’d screwed in a ring. He’d closed the circle. What the fuck was up with that?
Wow, I said, feeling the hair rise on the back of my neck.
I know, right? You get it, man.
My brother gazed at me in satisfaction. Then he went on: It was like being in a nightmare or something, I got totally freaked out. I just wanted to get out of there.
So what did you do?
What did I do? I finished. I pretty much had to.
I nodded and took the last slice of bread. Underneath the table my brother’s leg joggled restlessly. It seemed like the story had perked him up.
The Invention of Ana Page 10
