The Invention of Ana
Page 26
At the end of August came the phone call I was waiting for. It was early morning, not later than six or seven, when the garbage men were still busy on the street, and I fumbled for my phone, half asleep. Lighting up the screen was Irene’s number, and before I could think twice my hand had picked up the phone and my finger had touched the screen, and my voice had said hello.
Did I wake you? said Irene.
Yeah, you did, actually.
Sorry, I know it’s early. But I was wondering if you had time for a quick meeting today.
Today? Yeah, I’m sure we can sort something out. What’s it about?
It’s about Ana. There’s a bakery in Woodside, not far from her apartment. Shall we meet there, say ten o’clock?
Sure.
Good, I’ll send you the address.
It was already a hot, oppressive day when I biked north a few hours later. The whole route up the back of the city, behind the crooked pipes of the refinery, across the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge, over the barges loaded with slag, past the glinting heaps of scrap metal and the containers, rusty and full of stagnant rain, I tried to guess what Irene might want to tell me about Ana. There’d been something oddly mechanical about her voice on the phone, like she’d had to concentrate to breathe and shape air into words, but every time a thought arose I didn’t dare follow it through to the end. Finally I reached the shops of Roosevelt Avenue, crouched under the elevated tracks of the 7 train, and caught sight of a Chinese bakery between the terraced houses. When I stepped through the doorway, I couldn’t see Irene anywhere. Ordering coffee, I sat by the window and listened to a traffic cop, who was standing in the shadow of the awning and speaking loudly into his phone. When it was twenty past ten, I ordered another coffee and began to drum my fingers against the table, increasingly nervous that Irene wouldn’t show up. At ten thirty I called her, but she didn’t pick up, and when I tried Ana’s phone a voice said the number I’d dialed was no longer in service. I sat there for another fifteen minutes before I paid the bill, and I was just gathering my stuff when a dark-haired girl came walking into the bakery. She was small and short, not more than eleven or twelve years old. She glanced around, then, catching my eye, made a beeline for me.
Excuse me, she said. Are you waiting for Ana Ivan?
Yeah, in a way. I was going to meet her colleague.
Okay, here. I’m supposed to give you this.
Thanks, I said, as she handed me a shiny white plastic bag.
Then she smiled and nodded, and before I could ask what had become of Ana and Irene, she turned and made for the exit. For a moment I considered running after her, but then my eyes fell to the bag and the black notebook inside, and I recognized it immediately. It was Ana’s logbook. I remembered the frayed spine, her name in silver felt-tip, and I lifted the book out of the bag and turned it over in my hand. When I opened the first page, an odd sensation prickled at my neck. A feeling that someone was looking at me, like I was in the middle of a performance or a show, and I turned and peered around, but the bakery was completely empty, even the traffic cop had left, and so I closed the book and got to my feet. One last glance over my shoulder, then I stepped out into the street and ducked beneath a taco cart’s tarpaulin, heavy with rainwater and dark with soot, and walked south in the striped shadows of the railway ties.
That day I followed the Newtown Creek down through Brooklyn to its stale source in Bushwick. When I reached Morgan Avenue, I sat at a coffee shop, called my landlord, and gave notice. Through the window I could see the warehouses and metal fences of the industrial park, figures flickering across the warm asphalt like holograms, and when it began to get dark I stood up and walked the last half mile to my brother’s building. For a few minutes I circled the entrance, then I squared up in the gateway and pressed the button next to his name. Silence for a second or two. Then the gate buzzed and I trudged upstairs, and when he saw me from the doorway his eyes shone with surprise.
What the hell, he said, smiling. You look like shit.
Over two beers we chatted about the biennale in Spain, about Lærke, who’d left, about Ana’s phone number, which was disconnected, and then he opened his computer and let me listen in as he fired his assistant in Helsinki. He grabbed his pot and tobacco and rolling papers, and when he’d lit a joint he leaned back on the sofa with a smile.
It’s good to have you back, he said. Now it’s the two of us against the fucking Finns.
Yeah, I said. It’s just us now.
A few weeks later I packed up my scant possessions. The mattress I threw onto the street, the lamp and dresser I sold online. The books I gathered into a pile, ready for a thrift shop, and when I’d packed my final suitcase I paused at the kitchen sink and glanced around me. There wasn’t much left of my life. Piece by piece it had disappeared: one less girlfriend, one less friend, soon one less city, until all that remained from the past six months was a fraying notebook. From the sink I could see it in the pile. Several times I’d tried to throw it out, but now it was in front of me I couldn’t take my eyes off it. The shiny black surface, the worn white spine. I tried to resist, but after a minute or two I put down the dishcloth and picked it up. For a moment I let my hand glide across the cover, then I opened the book and leafed through the pages.
Acknowledgments
This book wouldn’t have existed without Cristina David and her constant mingling of fact with fiction.
Special thanks to Anna Will for her relentless drive in animating this novel; and to Geoff Shandler and Chloe Moffett for believing in what she brought to life.
Thank you to Caroline Waight for her rigorousness, craft, and patience; and to Jenny Thor for her vision and perseverance in bringing this book to just the right readers.
Thank you to readers Maria Marqvard, Oline Møller Wissing, Martin Rosengaard, Janne Breinholt Bak, Stinne Lender, Szilvia Molnar, Minna Haddar, and Claire Stephanic for their helpful suggestions.
Thank you to James Hannaham, Maxim Loskutoff, Clarinda Mac Low, Jakab Orsos, Emily Witt, and Cathrin Wirtz for opening up America.
Thank you to the curators and artists who responded to endless queries: Marian Ivan, Yvonne Bialek, Alexandra Croitoru, Dana Kopel, Florin Bobu, Livia Pancu; and to the tranzit.ro/ residency in Iași.
Grateful acknowledgment to the Danish Arts Foundation for generous support; and to Candace and Doug Loskutoff for hospitality.
Finally, my deepest gratitude to my parents, my brother, Louise, and Magnus for their love, patience, and belief.
About the Author
MIKKEL ROSENGAARD’s first novel, The Invention of Ana, has been published in five languages. He is a two-time recipient of the Danish Arts Foundation’s Literary Fellowship, and his work has appeared in the Architectural Review, PBS’s Art21, Hyperallergic, and many other publications. He grew up in Elsinore, Denmark, and lives in New York City.
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Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
the invention of ana. Copyright © 2016 by Mikkel Rosengaard and Gyldendal, Copenhagen. English translation copyright © 2018 by Caroline Waight. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Originally published as Forestillinger om Ana Ivan in Denmark in 2016 by Gyldendal.
First
Custom House hardcover published 2018.
first u.s. edition
Cover design by Ploy Siripant
Cover photographs: © plainpicture / Sally Mundy (woman); © olegganko / Shutterstock (clock face)
Clock illustration by Lunatictm/Shutterstock, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Rosengaard, Mikkel, 1987– author. | Waight, Caroline, translator.
Title: The invention of Ana : a novel / Mikkel Rosengaard ; translated by
Caroline Waight.
Other titles: Forestillinger om Ana Ivan. English
Description: First edition. | New York, NY : Custom House, 2018.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017036753 (print) | LCCN 2017044738 (ebook) | ISBN
9780062679093 (ebook) | ISBN 0062679090 (ebook) | ISBN 9780062679079
(hardback) | ISBN 0062679074 (hardcover)
Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Literary. | FICTION / Coming of Age. | FICTION /
Urban Life.
Classification: LCC PT8177.28.O84 (ebook) | LCC PT8177.28.O84 F6713 2018
(print) | DDC 839.813/8—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017036753
Digital Edition February 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-267909-3
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-267907-9
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