Eight White Nights

by André Aciman

  “And I kept hoping you’d call.”

  “Instead, you showed up.”

  “Instead, I showed up.”

  Still, what gumption to drop in on someone with breakfast-on-the-go and never a worry he’d say no. This was how she’d introduced herself. This was how she waited at the movie theater. This is how she lived, did everything. I envied her.

  This is how she behaved with everyone. Skipping out on people, then barging back in. Speak, she’d say, and then as suddenly click off. Something told me that as late as it got last night and as often as she’d avoid picking up her phone while with me, she’d still found time to call Inky after I’d dropped her off. Then there was the old man we were visiting. He had no idea she was going to show up that morning, much less with a stranger. You mean you’ll just idle into his driveway, honk a few times to give him time to wash his face, comb his hair, and put in dentures, and shout Yooohooo, guess who’s here!

  No, she was going to call him as soon as we left Edy’s.

  Who’s Edy? I asked, more baffled than ever. You’ll see. Silence. Did I like not knowing anything? No, I didn’t. Actually, I loved nothing better and was just discovering it. This was like playing blindman’s bluff and never wanting my blindfold removed.

  Perhaps I got to love having my hours messed and tousled with, because dicing up my days and my habits into scattered pieces that you couldn’t do anything with until she was there to put them together for you was her way of shaking things up, spinning you around, and then turning you inside out like an old sock—your heart a laundered sock looking for its mate—I didn’t just think of you last night, Clara, ask me, make me tell you and I will, I’m dying to anyway.

  I didn’t know where we were headed, or when we’d be coming back. I didn’t want to catch myself thinking about tomorrow either. There might not be a tomorrow. Nor did I want to ask too many questions. Perhaps I was still fighting back, knowing that fighting back is the dead-giveaway gesture of those who’ve long ago already surrendered. I wanted to seem totally nonchalant in the car, but knew that the stiffness in my neck and shoulders had started the moment I’d gotten in. It had probably been there last night at the movies as well. And at the bar. And on our walk. Everything was urging me to say something, not something bold or clever, but something simple and true. A strange narrow door was being left open, and all I had to do was flash my pass and push through. Instead, I felt like a passenger timorously walking up to a metal detector. You deposit your keys, then your watch, your change, your wallet, belt, shoes, télyfön, and suddenly realize that without them you’re as bare and vulnerable as a broken tooth. A stiff neck and a broken tooth. Who was I without my things in their tiny, little places, without my little morning rituals, my little breakfast in my crammed little Greek diner, my cultivated sorrows and my cunning small ways of pretending I hadn’t recognized that the woman downstairs screaming Me, Shukoff. Me, goddamnit! was the very one I’d taken to bed with me last night and, in the dark, thrown every caution when I’d asked her not to take her sweater off so that I might slip into it as well, because, in thinking of our naked bodies shrouded in wool together, part of me knew it was safe to break down the sluices and let my mind run wild with her, now that I’d blown two chances two nights running and had, in all likelihood, lost her for good?

  “You’re drifting.”

  “I’m not drifting.”

  She too hated people who drifted.

  “You’re quiet, then.”

  “I’m thinking.”

  “Tell it to the barges.” She paused. “Tell me something I don’t know.” Still looking straight ahead of her.

  “I thought you knew everything there was to know about me.”

  I was trying to remind her of last night’s admonition at the bar.

  “Then tell me something I want to hear.”

  The privilege of drivers: to say the boldest things without ever looking at you.

  “Like what?”

  “Like I’m sure you can think of something.”

  Did I get where she was going with this? Or was I just imagining?

  “Like walking you home last night and hoping to think of one more way to avoid saying goodbye because there was still so much to say? Like not knowing why the film seemed tied to us in so many knots? Like wanting everything all over again? Like that?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Like do you want me to go on, or should I stop?”

  I meant it to sound both as a warning of an avalanche to come as well as to show that I was just playing with her, that however close I got, I would never be the first to remove the specter she had put between us.

  “Like you can stop whenever you please,” she said.

  That would teach me to ask for help in navigating the shoals between us.

  “Where do they make people like you, Clara?”

  At first she did not answer. “Where?” she asked, as though she didn’t understand the question. “Why do you ask?”

  “Because it’s so hard to figure you out.”

  “I have no secrets. I lay my cards out. I have with you.”

  “It’s not secrets I’m thinking of. It’s how you get me to say things I’d never tell anyone.”

  “Oh, spare me the Printz Oskár!”

  I let a few seconds elapse.

  “Spared!” as though I was conceding the point to humor her only, though I felt at once snubbed, yet relieved.

  She laughed. “I can’t believe it’s me who’s blushing, not you,” she said.

  “Permission to change subject?” I said, handing her the last piece of muffin found at the bottom of the paper bag.

  “The things you come up with, Printz.”

  •

  I loved these little towns along the Hudson, especially on such an ashen, white day. Two decades ago, some of them may have been no bigger than industrial hamlets with sunken wharves and skeletal jetties. Now, like everything else around the city, they had blossomed into picturesque weekend villages. Off the road and perched on an incline was a little inn. I envied its occupants, its owners, those sitting in small dining rooms reading the morning paper this Christmas week.

  No. I liked being in the car.

  Yes, but to be in the dining room with her in one of those bed-and-breakfasts. Or better yet: to be there waiting for her to come downstairs and take her seat right next to mine at our table. And suppose it snowed heavily tonight and we had nowhere to sleep but here . . .

  “So tell me something else—anything, Printz.”

  “Clara B., it’s difficult keeping up with you. You’re constantly changing lanes on me.”

  “Maybe it’s because you’re headed to one place and one place only—”

  “—and have been warned repeatedly there are major repairs up ahead—”

  “—and don’t forget the roadblocks,” she corrected, seemingly jesting as well.

  Clara was a fast driver, but not reckless; I caught her several times changing lanes to allow impatient drivers through. But she didn’t let them through out of courtesy. “They make me nervous.” I had a hard time picturing her nervous.

  “Do I make you nervous?”

  She thought for a moment.

  “Do you want me to say yes—or no? I can go both ways.”

  I smiled. I couldn’t think of a nerve-racking moment in my life I’d enjoyed more. I nodded.

  “Deep, very très deep,” she said. “Way too much Vishnukrishnu Vindalu Paramashanti stuff going on between us.”

  I said nothing. I knew what she meant. But I had no idea whether she welcomed the intimacy or wanted it stopped.

  “Cemetery town,” I interrupted, pointing out the row of cemeteries in Westchester. “I know,” she said.

  I looked outside and realized we were in fact fast approaching the cemetery where my father was buried. I knew I was not going to raise the subject and would let it drop as soon as we’d passed the town. Had I known her better or felt less cramped, perhap
s I would have asked her to take the next exit, turn around, find a florist along the way, and join me for a short visit there.

  He would have liked her. Pardon me for not standing, frankly this here is really not good for anyone’s back. And turning to me, At least this one, with her spunk and her pseudo-hussy airs, is no ballbuster heiress.

  I wondered if the day would come when I’d trust asking Clara to park the car and take a few minutes to stop by his grave. Why didn’t I? She wouldn’t have hesitated to take me to her father’s, or to mine if I’d asked. Why hadn’t I called last night? Why couldn’t I just say, Will you let me tell you about my father someday?

  I’d never spoken about him. Would I remember to think of him again on our way back? Or would I choose to hate myself for burying him with a second death, the death of silence and shame, which I already knew was a crime against me, not him, against truth, not love. The wages of grief are paid in large bills and, later, in loose change; those of silence and shame no loanshark will touch.

  •

  A while later, and without warning, she veered right onto an exit and entered what seemed a tiny old fishing village with an antique masthead signaling the center of town. Then, in front of a secluded 1950s candy store not ten yards from a gas station, she parked the car. “We’ll stop for a short while.” A faded shingle up a brick staircase announced a place called Edy’s.

  I liked the nippy air that greeted us as soon as we stepped out of the car.

  Edy’s was a totally deserted blue-collar luncheonette. “Norman Rockwell goes Podunk,” I said. “Tea?” Clara asked. “Tea is good,” I said, determined to play along. Clara immediately dropped her coat on a Formica table by a large window facing the Hudson. “I’m going to the bathroom.”

  I always envied people who never thought twice about saying they were going to the bathroom.

  The fifty-plus waitress, whose name was embroidered in cursive pink on a striped blue apron, brought two empty thick mugs from which dangled two Lipton tea tags. Her left index finger was stuck through the handles of the two mugs, while her other hand held a round glass pitcher of hot water. “Edy?” I asked by way of thanking her. “That’s me,” she replied, depositing the mugs on the Formica table and pouring the boiling water.

  I took the seat facing the least appealing of the two outside views: a floating shed, which looked more like an abandoned ice-fishing hut. Then I changed my mind when I realized that Clara’s side featured a tilted, rusted, trellised pier. Then I changed my mind again: perhaps the view of the floating barge at the bottom of the gully wasn’t so ugly after all. I couldn’t make up my mind until I sensed a fireplace with a burning log in the back of the coffee shop. Suddenly the illusion of bay windows. I picked up both mugs and moved them to the sheltered corner booth by the fireplace. Even the view was better from here. Two tiny paintings hung between the relics of a sextant and an oversized meerschaum pipe: an imitation Reynolds portrait and a picture of a lurching bull with a matador’s saber pierced up his spine.

  When Clara came over, she sat down and cupped the mug with both palms in a gesture suggesting she loved nothing better than the touch of a warm mug between her hands.

  “I would never have discovered this spot in a million years,” I said.

  “No one would.”

  She sat, as she had last night, with both elbows on the table.

  Your eyes, your teeth, Clara. I had never been stirred by her teeth before, but I wanted to touch them with my finger. Never seen her eyes in daylight before. I sought them out and feared them and struggled with them. Tell me you know I’m staring at you, that you just know, that you want me to, that you too are thinking we’ve never been together in daylight before.

  Perhaps I was making her uncomfortable, for she resumed the affectation of trying to relieve something like frostbite on her hands by caressing her mug. An arm around her shoulders, an arm around her oversized sweater hanging off her bare, cashmered shoulders. That could be done easily enough, why not with Clara?

  She sat up, as though she had read my mind and didn’t want me to stray down this path again.

  I said something humorous about the old Jäcke. She didn’t answer, or wasn’t paying attention, or was simply brushing aside my limp attempt at blithe chitchat.

  I envy people who ignore all attempts at small talk.

  An arm to touch your shoulder. Why weren’t we sitting next to each other instead of face-to-face like strangers? Perhaps I should have waited for her to sit first and then sat next to her. What idiocy my changing seats and the commotion about the view of the floating barge and of the trellised pier, back to the floating barge—what did views have to do with anything?

  She leaned her head against the large sealed windowpane, trying to avoid touching the dusty tartan curtains. She looked pensive. I was about to lean my head against the window as well, but then decided against it; she’d think I was trying to mimic her, though I’d thought of it first. It would have seemed too premeditated an attempt to seem lost in the same cloud. Instead, I slouched back, almost touching her feet under the table.

  She crossed her arms and stared outside. “I love days like this.”

  I looked at her. I love the way you are right now. Your sweater, your neck, your teeth. Even your hands, the meek, untanned, warm, luminous palm of each hand resting cross-armed, as if you too were nervous.

  “So talk to me.”

  “So talk to you.”

  I fiddled with a sugar packet. For a change it seemed it was she who needed to fill the silence, not I. And yet it was I who felt like a crab that had just molted its shell: without pincers, without wit, without darting steps, just a hapless mass with aching phantom limbs.

  “I like being here like this too,” I said—being here, with you, having tea in the middle of nowhere, next to an abandoned gas station in the heart of soddy, cabin-town America—does it matter? “And this too, I like,” I added, letting my gaze land on the iced white shore and the bluffs beyond, as though they too had something to do with liking being here like this. “Being here the way we are right now,” I threw in as an afterthought, “though all this might have absolutely nothing to do with you, of course,” I added slyly.

  She smiled at my attempted afterthought.

  “Nothing to do with me at all.”

  “Absolutely not,” I insisted.

  “I couldn’t agree more.”

  She started laughing—at me, at herself, at the joy that came from being together so early in the day, at both our willfully transparent attempts to play down the joy.

  “Time for a third secret agent,” she added, taking a cigarette and proceeding to light it.

  Teeth, eyes, smile.

  “If it’s any consolation, I like this too,” she said, staring over at the distant woods across the river, as if they had more to do with our enjoyment of the moment than we did ourselves. Was she doing exactly what I had just done, paying us a compliment while undoing it by redirecting her gaze to the spectacle of bluffs beyond, or was she trying to raise the subject in a manner I didn’t dare to yet?

  “I’m sure you couldn’t care less, but I used to come here with Inky.”

  “What, chez Edy’s?” Why did I keep making fun of the place, why?

  “When they were kids, he and his brother would ride their boat here, fish, get drunk, then head back home before dark. Inky and I would drive up here, park the car, loll about awhile, and I’d watch him miss the old days, till we got into the car again and rode back to the city. Such a lost, lost soul.”

  “You’re a lost soul too?”

  “Nope!” she snapped without letting me finish what I didn’t even know I was attempting to ask. It meant, Don’t even try. Trenches, pits, the dales of pandangst were party talk.

  “Are you here now to be with him?”

  “No. I told you already. We’re over.”

  Dumb, dumb question.

  “So why are you bringing him up now?”

  “No n
eed to be upset.”

  “I’m not upset.”

  “You’re not upset? You should see yourself.”

  I decided to joke about it and picked up the tiny metal milk dispenser and, as though to determine what an upset face looked like, examined my reflection in it, once, twice, three times.

  Then I saw it. In the rush to meet her this morning, I had completely forgotten to shave. This, after making a deliberate effort to take my time in coming down, to show I wasn’t racing down the stairs to meet her.

  Did she want me to say I was upset? Was this, then, an “opener” of sorts, her way of forcing me to admit what I felt each time she spoke of him, so that she might yet again remind me that I had overstepped the bounds? Was she using her constantly resurrected ex to remind me of the trench between us?

  “I don’t look upset at all,” I said, pretending to argue with her remark.

  “Just let it go.”

  Why did she bring me to the brink each time I thought it was safe to take a step closer?

  “Inky would just sit here and simply stare at the bridge over there.”

  “Stare at the bridge? Why?”

  “Because his brother jumped off it.”

  I felt for the three of them.

  “And what did you do while he stared?” I asked, not knowing what else to ask.

  “Hoped he’d forget. Hoped it would stop haunting him. Hoped I could make a difference. Hoped he’d say something. But he’d just sit there and stare, blank, always blank. Until I realized he was telling me in his own subtle, tormented way that if I wanted to and kept at him, I could make him jump too.”

  Yes, I could see how Clara could bring anyone to jump.

  “So why do you come here?”

  “I like the salty-dog grunginess.” She too could affect being intentionally flippant.

  “Be serious. Do you miss him?” I proposed, as if to help her see the answer staring her in the face.