Eight White Nights

by André Aciman

  After we’d said goodbye at night, I’d made myself promise not to expect her to call me the next day, not to expect to see or hear from her in who knows how long, and certainly never to think of calling her. Unless I had good reason to. The best reason sprung on me hours later, but I didn’t heed it.

  At first I wanted to call her and tell her that . . . that I was happy to have spent the day with her and, in the process, make a few references to the day’s markers—Bach, strudel gâteau, Rohmer again, and the sudden appearance of the Prince Oscar along the Henry Hudson lying in wait for us, or the goodbye kiss it was no less awkward to seek than to avoid.

  But call and say what? That I took back every joke made at Herr Jäcke’s expense? That I’d spent an amazing day precisely as she foretold? That there’s so much to say? So, say it. I don’t know where to start. Is this going to take forever? I just wish you’d come home with me now, tonight, this moment. Why didn’t you ask me then, Oskár? Because I just couldn’t, because you’re so fucking forbidding with your hot-cold, fireice, speak-don’t-speak airs. Because I can’t make out where you are, who you are. Printz Oskár! Clara Brunschvicg! Good night. Good night. There’d be a moment of silence. Clara Brunschvicg . . . What? Clara Brunschvicg—Don’t say it, she’d interrupt. Don’t want me to say it? No. Then you say it. Printz Oskár, let’s not do this now. Tell me why you don’t want us to say it, tell me, tell me, tell me.

  I could have called on my way back home.

  I could have called in the cab.

  I could have called once I got home.

  I could have called you while you were in the elevator, called your name while you were speaking to Boris, shouted “Clara!”

  I could have answered her message as soon as I got it. One day I’m going to have to send you a text message. Written in typical Claraspeak, in stone, like a glyph that no one can decipher, not even its author. What could One day I’m going to have to send you a text message possibly mean? That this is not the text message she means to write, that the message she will write one day will say much, much more, and that this was just a teaser, a stay-tuned signal, with or without sequel? Or did it mean: I wish I had more to say, I wish I had the courage to say more, I wish I could tell you what I know you want to hear—why don’t you ask me, why don’t you just ask me, goddamnit? I wish you would read in between the lines, as I know you will and love to do, because you’ll take nothing I say at face value, which is why I must speak in double-speak, though I do not want to speak in cipher, especially to you, but am reduced to speak in the bleakest of codes.

  I kept reading the text message for at least an hour, as if it had come with a crib note I had accidentally lost. I should have answered something right away. But by three I had not answered, and I didn’t want her to think that I was the sort who checks messages in the wee hours of the morning. By four, when I awoke from a dream I couldn’t even remember, I thought I should answer with something witty: “Ceci n’est pas un message non plus. Go to bed.” But then I thought: Let her stew awhile.

  It did not occur to me that of the two of us I was and would always be the one stewing, not Clara. She didn’t do stewing. She’d written her SMS off the cuff and then gone to bed. Or did she just want me to think she’d written it off the cuff, then gone to bed?

  And why would she want such a thing? To hide what? To suggest what? To have me suspect or second-guess what exactly?

  No, this was me, just me.

  Then I was seized by a terrible anxiety. What if she had stayed up waiting to hear from me? What if, left by herself, she finally did pick up the phone when it rang for the nth time that night and had one marathon tug-of-war session with Inky that always led to a listless Okay, come over if you really want? I wonder if she would have picked up the phone on seeing it was I calling?

  At eight in the morning, when, contrary to every absurd expectation, it finally became apparent that she was not going to buzz me downstairs, I decided it was time to give up hope and head out to the beloved-no-longer-so-beloved Greek diner. Now yesterday’s missed opportunity to be alone with eggs and the paper came back like a reminder of failure and despair. Before stepping into the shower, I eyed the telephone. No, you do not call the Claras of this world just to say hi. You call them with a purpose, with a plan—even if it is a makeshift purpose. Do you have a plan? I do not have a plan. But you want to call? I want to call.

  Lunch, I thought. No, a late lunch. Not too loud, not too many people. A late lunch in a nice place.

  CB HOW ABOUT LUNCH PO

  Let her think this is my natural texting “voice.” Breezy, untrammeled, happening.

  By the time I came out of the shower, she had already answered. Here was someone not reluctant to show she was eager to respond.

  WHERE WHEN WHAT HOW WHY

  She had seen and raised me.

  It meant: So you want to play curt and lapidary, here’s curt and lapidary. See who’ll fold first.

  The why she’d thrown in as an afterthought was the thorniest part of the equation.

  PIRANESI 2 PM ITALIAN 67 & MADISON CUZ

  TERRIBLE REASON

  YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW THE REASON

  NAME ONE

  HANDEL ROHMER LAST NIGHT

  THAT WAS YESTERDAY

  I WANT TODAY TO BE LIKE YESTERDAY DO I NEED TO GO ON

  I was on the verge of acknowledging something, though I had no idea what.

  SMS is at once more intimate and more distancing. More so sometimes than the spoken word. The accent is there, but louder, sharper, clearer, a reef of curt intentions, easily mistaken but seldom misinterpreted. One more round and we’d be quarreling, not kissing.

  I KNOW OF A BETTER PLACE PICK ME UP AT 2

  I was going to utter a determined “Great,” but then decided to soften the tone to the more upbeat but formulaic “Done,” which I altered to the more compliant “I’ll be there,” to the mock-imperative “Be there,” but which, at the very last second, I wanted to mollify to the more gentle and evasive “Until then,” opting in the end for my original “Done.”

  All so very guarded and shifty. Posturing. On both our parts? Or just on mine?

  Afterward, I went to my Greek diner and did exactly what I’d longed to do yesterday. Sat by the large frosted window. Managed to exchange the exact same words with the Greek kukla who is no longer a kukla. Had my bottomless insipid coffee, ate all my hash browns, read the paper and yesterday’s as well.

  Then I went to a music store and bought CDs of all of Handel’s piano suites and of the Bach-Siloti. I would put on the music as soon as I got home and try to remember how the ice had cracked to the beat of a prelude that cast a haunting spell all day.

  I walked into a Starbucks, ordered the same coffee infused with mocha she had brought along yesterday, and opened one CD box after the other. I liked the post-Christmas crowd, tourists milling around Lincoln Center and so many New Yorkers off for the day. I still had two presents to buy. Then I realized that what I truly wanted to do was to buy Clara a present. Why buy me a present? Because. Because is a terrible reason. Because you changed everything, because as soon as you touch a day in my life, it changes color, like one of those mood rings, because if you so much as graze my skin that part of me is burned forever. Here, see this elbow? You tapped it once when we walked back from the bar. It hasn’t forgotten. See this hand? It held the tips of all your fingers when you cried. And as for my forehead, you once said you liked it, and ever since my thoughts are no longer the same. Because you make me like my life, who I am, and if everything stops here, not to have met you would be like having lived in a north country and never tasted a single tropical fruit. Cherimoya, mango, guava, papaya, I’ll name them all like the Stations of the Cross, or the towns to Campostella, or the stations on the Broadway local line, including the ghost station under Ninety-first Street, which is where you and I, Clara, drink of the same blood like two shades from the underworld who need to time-out together before heading back to wh
at are called the living.

  And then it hit me: I’m someone you’ll forget having known, aren’t I?

  I’m someone you’ll never remember meeting.

  I could die and you wouldn’t know.

  I bought her a copy of the Busch Quartet playing Beethoven’s A minor. With an indelible marker, I scribbled my dedication: The Heiliger Dankgesang is for you. It’s me.

  Dramatic.

  Subtle.

  Sweet.

  Fatuous.

  Happening.

  I liked it.

  Something told me she’d laugh and still forget.

  At two in the afternoon, when I came by, Clara was already waiting for me downstairs.

  “Last night’s film does not make sense at all,” she said as soon as the other Boris opened the door for her. “He didn’t desire her knee, he wanted her, but knew he’d never get her, so the insidious little perv went for the knee. A cheap diversion. Actually, he desired her but didn’t want to own up to it. Or—and it gets worse—he never did want her but thought he should, which put him in the double-bind position of wanting her and not wanting to want her, without perhaps ever having wanted her—”

  “How are you?” I interrupted.

  She started laughing.

  “I’m very well. But do you think I’m wrong?”

  “I think all of Rohmer’s men—oh fuck it!”

  She wrapped her huge multicolored wool shawl around her head and tucked it under her chin.

  “Scarf!” She wasn’t budging.

  “Scarf,” I repeated, undoing my scarf and fumbling with the knot she liked.

  “I’ll do it,” she said.

  Then she put her arm in mine and suddenly began walking north. We could take a cab, or we could take the bus—very scenic route, she said. Let’s walk, she wasn’t cold, she said. I immediately felt dismayed and began wondering whether this was going to be another outing that would require work or turn out to be one of those restaurants where she and Inky were regulars, where she and Inky did this, ate that, met So-and-so. “I know exactly what you’re thinking, it has nothing to do with it.” “That’s a relief,” I said. “I have to think of everything, don’t I. We don’t want no pouting.” “Who pouts?” “Someone I know gets easily worked up.” “I wouldn’t talk,” I replied.

  On our way up the totally deserted sidewalks of Riverside Drive, we finally remembered the barges and the giant tankers. “I see something up higher,” she said. “Do you think it’s what I think it is?” “Might be. Just might be.” But we both knew it couldn’t be. It was just our way of resurrecting yesterday.

  As we walked, I kept looking at all the buildings along Riverside Drive. I hadn’t walked on this sidewalk for years, and it hadn’t changed a bit. Now they had Clara written all over them.

  At some point along the way her phone began to ring. She looked for it in every pocket of her thick coat and finally found it. “I don’t have my glasses, who is it?” she said, handing over her phone. “It says Ricardo.” She grabbed the phone from me, turned it off, and put it away. “Who is Ricardo?” I asked. I’d always felt that she was surrounded by men, but why had she never mentioned Ricardo before?

  “It’s Inky.” Spoken abruptly.

  “Named after a ship, perhaps?”

  “No.” She didn’t think I was funny.

  The restaurant was empty. At one of the large tables closest to the kitchen, the help was already busy having lunch. One of the waiters was sitting at a small table all by himself reading the Corriere dello Sport.

  As soon as Clara walked in, she greeted him by his first name. He was the co-owner. Was there pasta? Plenty. He didn’t look up. She snuck behind the bar, opened what must have been an old fridge, produced a bottle of chilled wine and two glasses, asked me to uncork it, and headed into the kitchen, all the while removing her coat and undoing the complicated shawl wrapped around her head.

  Timidly, I uncorked the bottle, poured wine for the two of us, and joined her in the kitchen. The water, apparently, was still hot, so she asked Svetonio to “throw” in the pasta and begin heating the sauce. There were also some slices of chicken waiting to be sautéed if she wanted. “Grazie, Svetonio.” She turned to me and, without making introductions, explained that their friendship went back a long way. Should I read anything into it? Svetonio lets me come here and do my thing. I get him the best opera tickets all year. Believe me, I get the raw end of the bargain, non è vero, Svetonio? “Who’s to argue with Clara?” he said.

  She found the dry frying pan she was looking for, took out the sliced chicken wrapped in cellophane from the large refrigerator, then poured some olive oil into the pan. Svetonio produced some sliced vegetables. “Are you going to just stand there?” “No, I’m observing,” I replied.

  “Observe away. Lunch in no more than nine minutes. Better than anything you’d planned, right? . . . I need lemon and some herbs.” But she was talking to herself, not me.

  I watched as one of the waiters set a table that was far away from everyone else, but right by one of the French windows. I took out the CD and placed it on her side of the table.

  “What’s this?” she said when she came out to see if everything was ready. “Ein Geschenk.” “Für mich?” “Für dich.” “Warum?” I looked at her and couldn’t help saying: “Cuz.”

  She took the wrapped CD with her into the kitchen. I joined her again and stood by as she watched Svetonio remove the pasta and ladle it into two deep dishes. Sauce, cheese, and what she called some-pepper-please in imitation of waiters in restaurants. He then placed the sautéed chicken in a dish, covered it with another, produced the vegetables, and within seconds we were seated across from each other. Someone had even found time to bring a large bowl of salad for the two of us.

  “So what’s this?”

  “It’s my favorite piece of music.”

  “Yes, but what do you mean by It’s me?”

  “My moods, my thoughts, my hopes, everything I was before hearing this music and everything I became after hearing it—it’s all in there. Just better. Maybe it’s how I want you to see me.”

  We drank the wine.

  “And you want me to have this why?”

  “I can’t explain.”

  “You can’t or you won’t?”

  “I can’t explain that either.”

  “We’re doing real good, Printz. Let me ask you different, then.”

  Suddenly I felt at risk, exposed, about to be caught off guard.

  “Why give me this?”

  “Because I’ve bought almost everyone I know a Christmas present except you.”

  “And that’s the real reason?”

  “No, it is not.”

  “Printz Oskár!” There was mock-reproof in her voice.

  “Clara Brunschvicg, you make it very difficult for me both to lie and to tell you the truth. Everything seems twisted in an elaborate cat’s cradle.”

  “How?”

  “We say the things that matter as though they didn’t matter. And we let tangents take us off course to save us from lingering on the stuff that really matters. But then what matters comes back again, and we’re off on tangents and detours again.”

  She was staring at me. She was silent.

  “What stuff that matters?”

  I should have known.

  “Do I really have to tell you?”

  “Someone walking on eggshells?”

  I shook my head to suggest that I wasn’t. But I was walking on eggshells, and there was no point denying it. “Me feet is bleeding and me tongue is tied.”

  “Will you please just tell me and let’s move on to the pasta.”

  “Well, how shall I say this? Suddenly it feels so difficult—”

  “Why?” There was tenderness and no impatience in her voice.

  “Partly because I’ve never known anyone like you. I’ve never wanted to be known by anyone the way I want you to know me. I want to fake nothing with you and, yet, without meanin
g to, when I’m with you, I always feel I’m ducking and dodging. And yet you’re like the twin I never had. Hence this piece of music. The rest is all Vishnukrishnu Vindalu stuff, which I’ll spare you.”

  “No, I want to hear the chicken vindaloo stuff too.”

  “Not over spaghetti.”

  “We can have Indian food for dinner if you like.”

  “So you’re free tonight?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  I saw her lean her right side against the French window. I leaned against it with my left. This was just like yesterday, except better. I did not mind the silence. It brought to mind that time when we’d listened to the Handel together and had stared at each other for so long. She rested her chin on a fist and, looking at me, asked, “So go on with the vindaloo stuff.”

  I could feel my shoulders bunch up again. This was beginning to make me feel very uncomfortable, as if I were hiding something but didn’t have a clue what it was. I couldn’t even look her in the eye. The disconnect between our sentences, between her candor and my diffidence, was being rubbed in my face. Why did I feel I was being shifty with her when I was dying not to hide anything from her?

  “About the Beethoven-Vindalu,” I said, as if this was really what I’d been trying to say ever since watching her unwrap my gift, “maybe all I wanted was someone to speak for me—”

  “And say what?”

  “Clara, every subject we touch on, from boats to Bach to Rohmer, to tangelines and strudel gâteau, takes us to the same exact place each time, as though everything between us seems fated to keep prowling and scouring and knocking at one door—and that door we’ve decided—you’ve decided—stays shut. Right?”

  “I’ll answer when it’s my turn.”

  “Maybe Beethoven is my way around this door. Or maybe I should learn from Rohmer’s people, who get an indecent thrill from talking intimately about things that most people who’ve just met find awkward and prefer to pass over in silence.”