by André Aciman
“Strange,” I said.
“Why strange?”
She was sitting next to me, away from her father.
“Because I am the exact opposite. I have very little that anyone might want at this point and, as for what I want, I wouldn’t even know how to spell it out. But all this you know already.”
For a moment she just looked at me. “Maybe I do and maybe I don’t.” Meaning: I’m not playing your game. She knew, knew just what I was doing long before I knew I was doing it.
“Maybe you do, and maybe you don’t,” mimicked her father. “You’re so good at finding paradoxes, and once you’ve fished one out from your bag of easy notions you think you’ve got your answer. But a paradox is never an answer, it’s just a fractured truth, a wisp of meaning without legs. But I am sure our guest did not come to listen to our squabbling. Forgive our father-daughter tiff.”
We watched her turn the coffeepot upside down while she covered the spigot with a dish towel to prevent the coffee from spurting. Neither father nor daughter took sugar with coffee, but she suddenly realized that I might want it and, without asking me, rushed to the kitchen to bring the sugar bowl.
I did not usually take sugar, but was touched by her gesture and served myself a teaspoon. Then I wondered why I’d done it when I could so easily have said no.
We drank coffee quietly. After coffee I stood up: “Perhaps it’s time I headed to my hotel to review my notes for my reading this evening.”
She could not resist. “Do you actually need to review your notes? Haven’t you given the same reading several times already?”
“I’m always afraid I’ll lose my thread.”
“I can’t picture you losing your thread, Sami.”
“If you only knew what goes on in my head.”
“Oh, tell us,” she bandied, not without a touch of frisky guile, which surprised me. “I was thinking of coming to your reading today—if I’m invited, that is.”
“Of course you’re invited, your father too.”
“Him?” she asked. “He rarely goes out.”
“I do go out,” her father shot back. “How would you know what I do when you’re not here.”
She did not wait to reply but went back into the kitchen and returned with a plate on which she had sliced a persimmon in four. The other two persimmons were not quite ripe yet, she said. Then she left the terrace and came back with a bowl of walnuts. Perhaps it was her way of detaining me a while longer. Her father reached for the bowl and picked one. She did too and found the nutcracker buried underneath the nuts. He did not use the nutcracker, instead cracked a walnut with his hand. “I hate when you do that,” she said. “What—this?” And he cracked another one open as well, removed its shell then handed me the edible part. I was mystified. “How did you do that?” I asked. “Simple,” he replied. “You don’t use your fist, just your index finger, which you place across the seam of both halves, like this, and with the other hand you give it a firm tap. Voilà!” he said, offering the contents to his daughter this time. “You try,” he said, handing me a new nut. And sure enough, I cracked one open just as he had done.
“You live and learn.” He smiled. “I need to get back to my airplane pilot,” he added, standing up and pushing his chair back in to the table and leaving the terrace.
“Bathroom,” she explained. She sprang up and went straight to the kitchen. I left my seat and followed her, not quite sure whether I was wanted there. So I stood at the entrance and watched her rinse the dishes, one by one, then stack them way too hastily next to the sink before asking me to help her stow them in the dishwasher. She filled the cast-iron frying pan with steaming-hot water and coarse salt and began to scrub it clean, scraping vigorously as if in a fit of bad temper against a piece of burned fish skin that clung to the side of the pan and wouldn’t yield to the metal scrubber. Was she upset? When it came to the crystal wine glasses, though, she was gentler, delicate, as though something about their age and rounded shape pleased and soothed her and required watchful deference. So she wasn’t angry after all. The rinsing took a few minutes. When she was done, I noticed that the palms of her hands and her fingers had turned a very deep pink, verging on purple. She had beautiful hands. She looked at me while drying them with a small kitchen towel hanging from the refrigerator door handle, the same one she had used to stop the coffee maker from sputtering. She didn’t say anything. Then she squeezed a dispenser of hand lotion by the sink and rubbed her hands with the cream.
“You have nice hands.”
She didn’t respond. All she said after a pause was “I have nice hands,” echoing my words either to deride them or to question my motive for saying them.
“You don’t use fingernail polish,” I added.
“I know.”
Again, I couldn’t tell whether she was apologizing for not using polish or telling me to mind my own business. I had meant to suggest she was different from so many women her age who use all manner of color on their fingernails. But then she probably knew this, and didn’t need reminding. Lame, lame talk on my part.
When she was done in the kitchen, she walked back into the dining room then headed to the living room to get our jackets. I followed her there, which was when she asked me about my reading tonight. “It’s about Photius,” I said, “an old Byzantine patriarch who kept a precious catalogue of the books he read called the Myriobiblion, meaning ‘ten thousand books.’ Without his list we’d never have known of the existence of these books—because so many of them have completely disappeared.”
Was I boring her? Perhaps she wasn’t even listening to me while she riffled through some of the unopened mail sitting on the coffee table.
“So this is what you put between you and life—ten thousand books?”
I liked her wry humor, especially coming from someone who, despite her very palpable world-weariness on the train, might ultimately prefer cameras, motorbikes, leather jackets, windsurfing, and lean young men who make love at least three times a night. “I put so much stuff between me and life, you have no idea,” I said. “But then all this is probably over your head.”
“No, it isn’t. I know some of it.”
“Oh? Like what?”
“Like—do you really want to know?” she asked.
“Of course I want to know.”
“Like I don’t think you’re a very happy man. But then you’re a bit like me: some people may be brokenhearted not because they’ve been hurt but because they’ve never found someone who mattered enough to hurt them.” Then, on second thought, maybe because she felt she had gone too far: “Call it another one of my paradoxes fished out of my overfilled bag of notions. Heartache can be contracted without symptoms. You may not even know you’re suffering from it. It reminds me of what they say about a fetus eating its own twin long before being born. There may never be a trace of the missing twin but that child will grow up feeling the absence of his sibling his entire life—the absence of love. Except for my father and what you’ve said about your son, it seems there may have been very little real love or intimacy in both our lives. But then what do I know.”
She hesitated for a very short moment, and, perhaps fearing I’d start countering or taking too seriously what she’d just said, added, “I sense, though, that part of you may not like being told you’re not happy.” I attempted a polite nod that also meant I’m just going along with what you’re saying and won’t argue. “But the good part is—” she added, then caught herself once again.
“The good part is?” I asked.
“The good part is I don’t think you’ve closed the book or given up looking. For happiness, I mean. I like this about you.”
I didn’t answer—perhaps my silence was the answer.
“Right,” she blurted while handing me my jacket, which I put on. Then, abruptly changing the subject: “Your collar,” she said, indicating my jacket.
It was not clear to me what she meant. “Here, let me do it,” she said, standing in
front of me to straighten my collar. Without giving it another thought, I found myself holding both her hands on the lapels of my jacket against my chest.
I had planned nothing of the sort but simply let myself go and touched her forehead with my palm. I’ve seldom been this impulsive and to show I didn’t mean to cross a line began buttoning my jacket.
“You don’t have to go yet,” she suddenly said.
“But I should. My notes, my little talk, dead old Photius, the flimsy little screens I put up between me and the real world, they’re all waiting, you know.”
“This was special. For me, that is.”
“This?” I asked, though I couldn’t quite bring myself to believe that I knew exactly what she meant. I tried to withdraw but caressed her forehead one last time. Then kissed it. This time I stared at her, she wouldn’t look away. And in a gesture that caught me totally by surprise again and seemed to spring from who knows how many years back, I let my fingertip touch her on the chin, softly, the way a grown-up might hold a child’s chin between his thumb and forefinger to prevent it from crying, sensing all along, as she did herself, that, if she didn’t move, this caress on the chin was probably a prelude to what I did next, when I allowed my finger to travel along her lower lip—back and forth, back and forth. She did not move away but continued to stare at me. Nor could I tell whether I had offended her by touching her forehead this way, or whether, taken aback, she was still mulling over how to react. And still she continued to stare, bold and unbending. I ended up apologizing.
“It’s okay,” she said, with the start of what appeared to be a suppressed giggle. She was, I was persuaded, overlooking the whole thing and being a grown-up about it. All she did in the end was to turn around sharply and, without saying anything, simply pick up her leather jacket from the sofa. Her gesture was so brusque and so resolute that I was convinced I had upset her.
“I’m coming with you to the lecture hall.”
This baffled me. I was sure that she wanted nothing to do with me after what I’d just done.
“Now?”
“Of course now.” Then, perhaps to soften her abrupt turn, she added, “Because if I don’t keep an eye on you and follow you around town I know I’ll never see you again.”
“You don’t trust me.”
“I’m not sure.” Then, turning to her father who was seated in the living room now: “Pa, I’m going to hear his talk.”
He was surprised and probably disappointed that she was leaving so soon. “But you just got here. Weren’t you going to read to me?”
“I’ll read tomorrow. Promise.”
She was in the habit of reading to him from Chateaubriand’s Memoirs. He used to read Chateaubriand to her when she was in her early teens; now it was her turn, she said.
“Your father isn’t very pleased,” I said as we were about to leave. She shut the French windows. The room immediately darkened, and the sudden darkness cast a gloomy air that reflected the nearing end of fall and her father’s mood.
“He isn’t pleased. But it makes no difference. He pretends he’s going to work but he takes such long naps these days. In any event, when he naps I usually shop around to replenish his fridge with things he likes. I’ll do that tomorrow. The nursing service takes care of the rest. His person will come this afternoon and will also walk the dog, cook, watch TV with him, put him to bed.”
* * *
When we had gone downstairs and exited the building and were facing the Lungotevere she suddenly stood still and took a deep, deep breath of fresh late-October air. It surprised me.
“What was that for?” I asked, obviously referring to what had sounded like a mournful sound emanating from her lungs.
“Happens every time I leave. Overwhelming relief. As if I’ve been choking on bad air inside. One day, soon, I know, I’ll miss these visits. I just hope I won’t feel guilty or forget why I so badly needed to leave and shut the door behind me.”
“Sometimes I wonder if my son doesn’t have the same feeling each time he leaves me.”
She did not answer. She simply kept walking.
“What I need is a cup of coffee.”
“Didn’t you just have one?” I asked.
“That was decaf,” she said. “I buy decaf coffee for him, which I let him think is regular coffee.”
“Is he fooled?”
“Fooled enough. Unless he goes out to get real coffee himself and doesn’t tell me. But I doubt it. As I told you, I’m here every weekend. Sometimes, when I have a free day, I’ll hop on a train and spend the night here and then head back by late morning.”
“Do you like coming home?”
“I used to.”
And then I found myself asking something I’d never have dared ask.
“Love him?”
“Hard to say these days.”
“Still, you’re an amazing daughter. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”
She did not reply. A disabused smile that seemed to say You don’t know the half of it hovered over her features. “I think the love I once had has run its course. What remains is just placebo love, easy to mistake for real love. Aging, sickness, maybe the start of dementia will do this. Taking care of him and worrying for him and calling him all the time when I’m away to make sure he lacks for nothing—all these have worn out everything I had in me to give. You wouldn’t call this love. No one would. He wouldn’t.”
Then, as she’d already done before, she cut herself short: “Girl needs coffee!” Suddenly, she picked up her pace. “I know a nice place nearby.”
As we were headed to her café, I asked if she minded making a very short stop across the bridge. “I want to take you somewhere.”
She did not ask why or where but simply followed. “Are you sure you have time? You need to drop your bag, wash your hands, review your notes, who knows what else,” she said with a perceptible snicker in her voice.
“I have time. Maybe I was exaggerating before.”
“You don’t say! I knew you were a fibber.”
We laughed. Then, out of the blue: “He is very sick, you know. And the worst is, he knows it, even if he doesn’t want to talk about it. I still can’t tell whether it’s because he’s too scared to bring it up or just trying not to scare me. We both allege it’s to protect the other, but I think we haven’t found a way to talk about it and prefer to postpone confronting it until it may be too late. So we keep it very light, and joke about it. ‘Did you bring the cake?’ ‘I brought the cake.’ ‘Some more wine for me?’ ‘Yes, but only a drop more, Pa.’ In a short while he won’t be able to breathe, so if the cancer doesn’t kill him, pneumonia will. To say nothing of the morphine he’s started taking and which eventually causes other problems we don’t need to talk about. I may have to move in with him if none of my siblings will. We all say we’ll take turns, but who knows what excuses each will find when the time comes.”
On our way we took a slight detour and stopped at my hotel. I said I was going in to drop my bag at the desk. The attendant, who was watching television, said he would have one of the bellhops bring it up to my room. Miranda didn’t enter the lobby but took a peek at the little chapel inside the hotel. When I came out I saw her using the toe of her boot to fiddle with a loose cobblestone that seemed to interest her.
“Two minutes and you’ll see what I meant to show you,” I said, sensing her edginess. I wanted to say something about her father, or at least close the subject with a few comforting words. But I couldn’t think of a thing that wasn’t a platitude and was glad she had dropped the subject.
“This better be worth it,” she said.
“It is to me.”
Within a few minutes we approached a building on the corner of the street. I stopped in front of it and stood quiet.
“Don’t tell me—vigil!”
She remembered.
“Where?” she asked.
“Upstairs. Third floor, large windows.”
“Happy memories?”
“And?”
“If I come back to my hotel each time I’m in Rome it’s because it’s just a few steps away from this building,” I said, pointing to the windows upstairs that clearly hadn’t been cleaned or replaced in decades. “I love to hover here. Then it’s as if I’m still upstairs, still reading Ancient Greek, still grading student papers. I learned to cook in this building. I even learned to sew buttons here. Learned to make my own yogurt, my own bread. Learned the I-Ching. Had my first pet because the old French lady downstairs didn’t want her cat any longer, and the cat liked me. I envy that young man living upstairs, though he wasn’t very happy here. I like to come back later in the evening when it grows dark to watch the apartment. Then if a light goes on at my old windows, my heart just bursts.”
“Why?”
“Because part of me probably hasn’t given up wanting to turn back the clock. Or hasn’t quite accepted that I’ve moved on—if indeed I did move on. Perhaps all I truly want is to reconnect with the person I used to be and lost track of and simply turned my back on once I moved elsewhere. I may never want to be who I was in those days, but I do want to see him again, just for a minute or so to find out who this person is who hasn’t even left the wife he hasn’t met yet, and who is still so far from knowing he’ll be a father someday. The young man upstairs knows nothing of this, and part of me wants to bring him up-to-date and let him know I’m still alive, that I haven’t changed, and that I’m standing outside here right now—”
“—with me,” she interrupted. “Maybe we can go upstairs and say hello. I’m dying to meet him.”
I couldn’t tell whether she was taking the joke to the next level or being oddly serious.
“I’m sure he would have loved nothing more than to open the door and see you waiting on the landing,” I said.
“Would you have let me in?” she asked.
“You know the answer!”
