Copyright
Harper Perennial
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This Harper Perennial edition published 2008
First published in Great Britain as Beginner’s Greek by Fourth Estate in 2008
Copyright © James Collins 2008
James Collins asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
‘Beginner’s Greek’, from Collected Poems by James Merrill and J. D. McClatchy and Stephen Yenser, editors, copyright © 2001 by the Literary Estate of James Merrill at Washington University. Used by kind permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. Quotations from The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann are taken from the Everyman’s Library edition, with a translation by John E. Woods.
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Source ISBN: 9780007255825
Ebook Edition © JANUARY 2014 ISBN: 9780007580699
Version: 2019-06-18
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Dedication
To
VIRGINIA DANCE DONELSON
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Note to Readers
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Epilogue
About the Author
About the Publisher
Prologue
When Peter Russell boarded an airplane, he always wondered whether he would sit next to a beautiful young woman during the flight, and, if so, whether he and she would fall in love. This time was no different, except for his conviction that—this time—it really would happen. Of course, he always believed more than ever that this time it really would happen. But he knew. He knew. He was working his way down the aisle of a plane bound for Los Angeles from New York, and he figured, realistically, that the occurrence he envisioned would more likely take place on a long trip. He was pleased to discover that on his side of the plane the rows had only two seats, an arrangement that would promote intimacy and arriving at his assigned place he found that his row mate had not yet appeared, which would allow his mind to savor the possibilities for at least a few more minutes. He stowed his suit jacket, briefcase, and laptop, and settled into his seat by the window. He opened his paper and then looked to his right, regarding the pregnant emptiness beside him. The clasp and buckle of the seat belt lay there impassively, indifferent to whom they would soon embrace. He looked at the scratchy gray and red upholstery, with its abstract design that vaguely recalled clouds at sunset. Peter remembered being at dinner in college one time and listening to an incredibly pretentious jerk, his best friend, impress everyone with some stuff from the highly selective English seminar he was taking—something about how absence implies presence. (“So I guess I shouldn’t worry about cutting class so much.” General laughter. Jerk.) Well, Peter had to admit, the most prominent thing about the throne of absence beside him was the presence that it lacked.
A man wearing a beige shirt and jacket stopped at Peter’s row. He was short and Eastern European—looking and had a small mustache. He looked at the stub of his boarding pass and at the row number and back again and moved on. Peter was relieved. But who knew? Anyone who sat with him might transform his life in ways he would never expect. The man coming down the aisle, the one with the bulldog face and gold tie clasp, might be the owner of a smelting concern in Buffalo, and he might take a shine to Peter and ask him to become a vice president, and Peter might say yes, and move to Buffalo, where he would find the people more complicated than he expected and where, in an appealing way, the grime would climb like ivy up the walls of the old brick buildings. He would marry someone nice who had worked in New York for a couple of years but preferred Buffalo and being near her companionable, well-off parents, and he and she would live in a spacious Victorian house, with several old trees whose leaves in summer were as big as dinner plates. Or what about the ancient, bent-over gentleman in the three-piece suit? Couldn’t he be a great-uncle who had disappeared in Burma decades ago and about whom Peter had never heard but whose identity would be revealed when Peter noticed that his ring bore the same distinctive device as one owned by Peter’s grandfather? He would leave Peter his fortune.
The tie-clasp man walked past Peter; the ancient one sat before reaching him. Most passengers seemed to have boarded by now. Yet Peter felt a tingle. Something, he knew, was about to happen. Yes—definitely—a young woman was going sit down next to him, and not just a young woman, the young woman: a really pretty, really kind young woman, and they would get to talking, and they would become enclosed, in their pair of seats, in a kind of pod within a pod, suspended far above the earth, and by the time they landed it all would be settled and clear. More happy, happy love! Naturally, he had given this individual a lot of thought. He would add and subtract her attributes. She would be pretty and kind. Then pretty and kind and smart. Then pretty and kind and smart and funny, and, in a general way, perfect. Was that too much to hope? He very well knew that it was. He knew that real people with whom one really shared a real life in the real world had flaws. Aren’t the slubs and natural variations what give a fabric its special character? Yes, but he didn’t want to fall in love with a fabric. He wanted to fall in love with a young woman, a young woman who was pretty and kind and smart and funny and—well, pretty and kind would do, if only she would also fall in love with him.
Peter stared out the window: a truck was pumping fuel into the plane’s belly through a thick, umbilical hose. Peter was a happy fellow, basically. He was in his early twenties and he was good-looking, with an open face and light brown eyes and fine brown hair that flopped over his forehead; he stood a shade under six feet and had a strong, medium-sized frame. He liked his job, basically, and he was doing well; he had friends; he was a decent athlete; he had had a relatively happy childhood. But this love business—so far, it had not been very satisfying. He had been involved with girls he liked; he had been involved with girls he didn’t like. In neither case had he ever really felt … whatever it was that he imagined he was supposed to feel. He was shy, so that even though he showed determination at work, and playing hockey he positively enjoyed giving an opponent a hard che
ck, he shrank before a girl who attracted him, and this made the search for someone who would make him feel whatever it was he was supposed to feel particularly difficult. Moreover, he wasn’t cold-blooded, so he couldn’t pursue and abandon girls with the same relish as some of his friends, his best friend in particular; rather, he had a sympathetic streak that, in the matter of making conquests, seemed much more like a weakness than a strength.
Peter watched a crewman begin to uncouple the fuel hose. Then he felt a Presence. It was a female, he sensed. Could this be the very one, could this be She? He turned his head and did see a woman. A woman who was perhaps seventy years old wearing a black wig. In place of eyebrows she had two arched pencil lines, and she had applied a large clown’s oval of red lipstick to her mouth. Peter’s eyes met hers. Her false eyelashes reminded him of tarantula legs. My darling!
“What row is this?” the woman asked him. Peter told her. She looked at her boarding pass and threw her hands up. “Ach,” she said, “my row doesn’t exist. There is no such row. It’s a row they tell you about for a joke. They skipped it. I have the plane where they skip rows. If my son would visit me, I would avoid this aggravation. But no. The wife—the wife gets dehydrated on the plane. Dehydrated, you know—water?” She looked hard at Peter. “Are you married?” she asked. He shook his head. “Marry a nice girl.” She paused a moment to make sure this advice sank in and then turned around and headed back toward the front of the plane.
Peter could see no other passengers in the aisle. A flight attendant strode by closing luggage bins. Peter listened to the engines. Any minute now the plane would begin to pull away from the gate and the monitors drooping from the ceiling would begin to play the safety video. Peter looked at the empty seat beside him. His earlier agitation and euphoria had dissipated, replaced by a hangover of irrational disappointment. He looked at the seat belt, two lifeless arms embracing no one. Of course, all that could be inferred from absence was absence. He now knew who would sit beside him: nobody.
Peter sighed and shrugged his shoulders. Then, like a depressive pulling the covers over his head, he spread open his paper so that it surrounded him and began to read a story with the headline “Council Rebuffs Mayor on Wake-Zones Measure.” It was quite interesting, actually. There was an effort to slow watercraft to prevent damage to shoreline structures. Like Venice. Peter had been reading for a couple of minutes when he heard some rushed footsteps coming toward him, the light, tripping footsteps, he noted, of a young person, most likely a female young person. Then, when they had seemed to reach his row, the footsteps stopped. Peter became aware of a form hovering nearby. But because of his newspaper, he couldn’t see who it was. He nonchalantly folded the paper back, glanced to his right, and saw that a young woman was hoisting a bag overhead. As she lifted her arms, she revealed a tanned, well-modeled stripe of abdomen. Peter’s heart fluttered. He concentrated on his paper. “In New South, Courthouse Towns See Change, Continuity.”
The young woman sat down. As well as he could, while pretending to idly look around the cabin, Peter studied her. She appeared to be Peter’s age, and she had long reddish blond hair that fell over her shoulders. She wore a thin, white cardigan and blue jeans. What Peter first noticed in her profile was the soft bow of her jaw and how the line turned back at her rounded chin. It reminded Peter of an ideal curve that might be displayed in an old painting manual. His eye traveled back along the jaw, returning to the girl’s ear. It was a small ear, beige in color, that appeared almost edible, like a biscuit. Her straight nose had a finely tooled knob at the end, and her forehead rose like the side of an overturned bowl; her complexion was as smooth and warm-toned as honey. As to her form, she was lanky, with long legs and arms and thin wrists. Her long neck held her head aloft.
Now the young woman turned in Peter’s direction, looking for the clasp on her seat belt. The trapezoid created by her shoulders and her narrow waist, the roundness of her bosom, the working of her fingers, so long they seemed like individual limbs, all moved him deeply. Then she raised her head, looked at him, and smiled. The effect was like seeing the sun over the ocean at midmorning, a tremendous blast of light. It was as if the young woman had raised some mythic golden shield whose brilliance would prostrate the armies of the Hittites. She had an oval face, and her large eyes were set wide apart; they were green, as green as a green flame! Peter instructed the muscles at the corners of his mouth to retract in a friendly way, with a hint of flirtatiousness. He imagined the result was like the grimace of someone breathing mustard gas. The girl nodded and looked away, buckling her seat belt and settling herself in.
Before she sat down, Peter noticed, she had thrown a thick paperback onto her seat. He hadn’t been able to see the title. Now she opened it and began to read. In her left hand she held back a thick wedge of pages, about two thirds of the book. After a moment, Peter saw out of the corner of his eye that she had let go with her left hand and the book had fallen closed. She sat staring before her, lost in thought. Peter saw the book’s cover and was taken aback: The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann.
To sit next to a beautiful young woman on a flight from New York to Los Angeles is one thing. To sit next to a beautiful young woman on a flight from New York to Los Angeles who is on page five hundred of The Magic Mountain is quite another. If you look over to see what the beautiful young woman next to you is reading, and it turns out to be a book about angels, then you can with perfect justification refuse her entry into your life. What could you possibly have to say to each other? The same logic applies even if the book is more respectable, but basically dumb—a harrowing but ultimately life-affirming memoir. And if the book is utterly respectable but still basically dumb, say the new book by a fashionable, overrated English novelist, then the young woman is especially dismissible, since the worst alternative possible is talking to someone who thinks she is clever but isn’t. At the same time, if she were reading something that showed that she really was extremely smart—a computer-science journal—then there would be no point in talking to her either: she would be far too intimidating. In sum, an argument could be derived from virtually any reading matter that would allow a young man—scared out of his wits—to persuade himself that it was perfectly sensible, rather than the height of cowardice, to ignore the beautiful young woman who would be sitting next to him for the following five hours. Any reading matter, that is, except The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. A beautiful young woman reading The Magic Mountain—how could he weasel out of this challenge? It was a serious book, but not one suited to a preening intellectual, who would prefer one that was more difficult and less stodgy. A young woman reading The Magic Mountain had to be intelligent and patient and interested in a range of different ideas, many of them quite old-fashioned. She would also happen to be reading the only long German novel that Peter Russell himself had ever read.
Needless to say, for all his daydream eagerness, now that he was actually presented with the possibility of falling in love with a beautiful young woman sitting next to him on an airplane, Peter was terrified. Terrified that he might actually get what he’d dreamt of getting and terrified that now, having the opportunity to get it, he would screw up. If he did not find some way to speak to this young woman, and charm her, he would kill himself. If he spoke to her and she, without even looking at him, gathered her belongings and moved to another seat, he would also kill himself. The plane had taken off by this time and drifted slowly, as it seemed, above a thick wadding of cloud. The sound of the engines was loud but had become familiar and functioned as thought-extinguishing white noise. Peter was hanging in the air and for five hours essentially nothing would change. The unvariegated membrane of time that stretched before him would be dimpled only when the flight attendant handed him a beverage and a packet of pretzels. Yet, and nevertheless, notwithstanding all this inertia, tremendous forces of potential energy were gathered in this setting. For without even speaking to her, Peter was convinced, he knew for a certainty, he had not the slightes
t doubt, that he could spend the rest of his life with the young woman who had happened to sit next to him, and it would be blissful.
He could tell this not simply on account of her appearance, or the book she read, but because of the way she held the book in her hands, the way she tilted her head, the way she lightly set her lips together. All this provided more than enough evidence of her kindness, devotion, wisdom, grace, wit, and capacity for love. Never in his experience had he learned more about a woman’s character after thorough, and often quite unpleasant, explorations of it than he had already known within thirty seconds of meeting her. (With men, he had discovered, you needed five seconds.) And now he heard the voice of emotional maturity explain to him, patronizingly, that his assumptions about this young woman were based on a “fantasy.” Real life, real marriage, involves a commitment to a real person with all her flaws and individual needs. A real life together was doing the dishes when you were tired and paying the mortgage. He stole another glance at the young woman. He imagined her thumb and forefinger grasping a ballpoint pen and writing out a mortgage check, her hand working like some antique mechanism that was a marvel to the world. Bring on the dishes.
So, as we have seen, however inert the setting might seem to be, tremendous forces were gathered in the cabin of this aircraft. Forces. Tremendous ones. Peter knew that with the smallest effort he could potentiate the situation, with epochal consequences for his life and happiness. It was as if the entire cabin were filled with the tasteless, odorless fumes of powerful romantic-sexual gas, and only a spark was needed to create an explosion; the plane would suffer no damage, the other passengers wouldn’t even notice, but the result would change his life.
What would that spark be? Peter was not one of those people who easily strike up conversations with strangers. If there were a subset of that group from which he was even more decisively excluded, it would be that which consists of men who easily strike up conversations with strangers who are pretty girls. His best friend was able to meet the eyes of a girl in line at the movies and smile and casually say something like “So, do you think this really is as good as his last one?” Then they’d be off and running. Peter, meanwhile, expected to address the girl’s friend, would stand by, mute.
Love In the Air Page 1
