Eight White Nights

by André Aciman

  If she were Clara, my heart would have gone out to her and I would have kissed her, because there was something incredibly moving in her sorrow. “Can I call you sometime?” I asked.

  “Sure,” she replied, her face still glued to the fish tank. I wasn’t sure she understood.

  “I mean: can I call you?”

  “Sure,” she repeated with the exact same casual air that continued to find fish far more important and that seemed to say, I heard you the first time.

  Her number couldn’t have been easier to remember. The whole thing had happened in less than ten seconds.

  “Anything else you care to look at?”

  I shook my head and decided to buy two of the rotating models. The owner of the store asked his son to gift wrap the boxes. “Wrap them separately, Nikil, not together, not together, I said.” I was ready to burst out laughing and was trying to control the quivering on my lips. She must have thought I was smiling broadly for the joy such gifts would bring the two boys.

  “Put yourself in the place of the boys when you walk in with these huge packages,” she said.

  I tried to and was only able to think back to my childhood. A stranger walks into my parents’ living room with a wrapped box a few days after Christmas. I’m not sure the box is for me, so I contain my excitement, and to master it rush to my bedroom. Meanwhile, the stranger mistakes my quick exit for indifference or, worse yet, for arrogance. I wanted him to coax me out of my bedroom, while he wanted to see excitement and gratitude. When I am no longer able to contain myself and ask someone if the box is for me, they tell me “Probably,” but that the guest has already left and taken the gift with him.

  “Maybe this is why we like Christmas so much. It brings out the child in us,” I finally said.

  “Which is a good thing?” she asked.

  “Which is a very good thing.”

  I liked her very much.

  “I can’t wait to call you,” I said.

  She gave an absentminded shrug, as if to say, You men, all the same! There wasn’t the least touch of guile in her, unless absentmindedness itself was its most rarefied form. She might have been saying, You mean to call, but you won’t. “Call me this afternoon. I’m not doing anything.”

  When my friend joined us, he seemed surprised by the speed with which we’d managed to find and purchase two toys. He put his arm around her shoulders. She simply dug her hands into her coat pockets again and seemed preoccupied by the patterns on the floor. What a complicated woman, I thought. Then I corrected myself: perhaps not complicated at all; perhaps she was the more candid person of the three. Perhaps Clara was too. It was just I who needed them complicated, if only because finding guile in them was my way of making them like me, of assuming they spoke my language and that I could speak theirs.

  There’d been a moment at the wrapping desk when we were both resting our hands against the counter. By accident, our hands had touched. She did not remove hers, and I didn’t remove mine. You’d think we were both totally engrossed by the fire trucks.

  We separated a block later. I watched her reach for his hand and find it before springing through the slush to make it across the street before the light changed.

  Yet she’d cheat on him in a minute, I thought, thinking back to Clara, who, for all her kisses at the party, was busy telling friends and strangers how easily she’d ditched Inky. I was sure she did the same with me: weep with me while listening to the Handel, have me over for tea, want me to spend the night with her, then double-cross me all the way downtown first thing the next morning.

  I was hardly better myself.

  On Ninety-fifth Street I had a moment of unbearable hesitation. Should I bother going at all? Had I even been invited? I couldn’t remember, but assumed I was always welcome there. I’d have lunch with them, even if they had already started without me. I’d drop the toys with the boys. We’d have cake. Then by four o’clock I’d call Lauren. It had been my intention earlier this week to bring Clara along and introduce her to Rachel and her friends and open up my life to her, bit by bit. Now, I’d call Lauren by three—to put Clara out of my mind.

  Before ringing at their brownstone, I could already hear the hubbub of voices chatting loudly within. I even heard my own ring, and the effect it had on the noise in the house. At first silence, then the patter of feet, and the sudden burst of greetings. A stranger bearing gifts. It did remind me of my childhood.

  We’ve so much food. And all this booze.

  Rachel came out of the kitchen and kissed me. Her sister said she would fill a plate with a bit of everything. An Indian couple had brought a stew that was to die for, and there was still lots left.

  I called this house the Hermitage, because there was something good and wholesome about it, though it was never clear who lived there, who didn’t, who was sleeping over and who just passing through. Always plenty of food, always new friends, children, and as always a bevy of pets, laughter, good fellowship, and conversation. What a relief to stop by this sanctuary and see everyone again, as if I were just dropping in on a sick friend, or just needed to pick something up or borrow a book, reconnect, touch base.

  Sometimes I pass here by cab without stopping. Just look in through the large dining-room window to make sure everything is all right. Someone is always bringing in something from the kitchen, and around the dining table there are always people, good friends. Once, while passing by, I even caught sight of two bottles of white wine which they’d left outside the window to keep chilled. I’d taught them this trick, which my father had taught me. When the bottles were stolen once, Rachel decided the refrigerator was good enough.

  As usual, I made my way straight into the kitchen. It felt safer there, and gave me time to settle in and get used to faces I hadn’t seen in a while. I found a huge uncut French cucumber and right away put it in my trousers. “They put people in jail for sporting such huge ones,” said Rachel. “And this while it’s resting,” I said, which brought a guffaw from all those in the kitchen. Someone suddenly burst in: “They’re fighting again.” “They should get a divorce,” said Rachel, “they’re jerks.” “Who’s the jerk?” asks her sister. “I am,” said the man who was just quarreling with his wife and who thrust his way into the kitchen to get a glass of water, “I’m the jerk, I am. I. Am. The. Jerk. See?” he said, ramming his head against the wall. “The biggest jerk on earth.”

  The wife, who couldn’t resist, followed him into the kitchen. “At least no one’s hiding it from you.”

  “What?” he asked.

  “That you’re a jerk!”

  “You people are so boring,” broke in Rachel’s ex-husband, who was already preparing dinner for everyone tonight. “Can we at least pretend we’re all still friends? Tomorrow is New Year’s, for Christ’s sake.”

  Rachel in the kitchen was busy cutting the fruit tart I had brought. She turned to me once the kitchen was cleared of people. “And I want you to be nice to the Forshams,” she said. There was reproof in her voice. “But I am nice.” “Yes, but I know you’ll say something nasty, even without meaning to; you’ll imitate them, or make fun of their boy, I know you’ll do something.” Clara would have encouraged me to do nothing short of that. The Forshams always dropped in on Sundays. I called them the Connubials, or the United Front of Wedlock Appeal. She played bad cop, he played supercop. She was never wrong and he was just perfect.

  “And what’s with the disappearing act?” Rachel asked as she continued putting things on a large salver. Julia walked in. “Ask him.” “Ask him what?” “Ask him where he’s been all week and why he doesn’t answer his phone.”

  I decided to tell Rachel about Lauren so as not to say anything about Clara. Halfway through my story, though, she told me to follow her into the living room, which was when she told me to start the story all over again. “Tell everyone? Including those I don’t know?” “Including, and especially, those you don’t know.” This, I knew, was my punishment for not promising to be nice to the F
orshams. It was also the price for my disappearing act, she said. I loved being put in the pillory.

  They listened to the story about the toy store, laughed when I imitated rotating functionality.

  “Just like that—because of the way she tapped the fish tank?” someone asked.

  She tapped with two fingers, the index and the middle finger, in succession. I wanted to kiss her.

  Rachel was serving the wedges of tart. She had asked me to bring in two large espresso pots. In the middle of the room stood a very large glass plate on which lay an uncut hollowed circle of wobbly Jell-O for the children. It jiggled each time someone took a step in the room.

  “What fish tank?” asked the Forsham wife.

  “The girl he met.”

  “What girl he met in what fish tank?” asked the husband.

  “So when were you planning to call?” someone interrupted.

  “Around three.”

  “Want us to spot you?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Can we listen in, then? We promise, we won’t make a sound.”

  I loved the teasing.

  Julia brought me a plate with all kinds of leftovers. Gita, the Indian lady, insisted I have a second helping of biryani. She was wearing a sari over blue jeans. Her husband was busy explaining the scales on the piano to their five-year-old son. I took a seat on a low stool, put the square plate on my lap, and, resting my back against the large television set, began eating. Someone brought me a glass of red wine. Here’s a napkin, said Rachel, hurling a folded cloth napkin at me. I loved this.

  •

  One of the guests began to discuss the Rohmer festival that was playing down the block. Tonight was to be the last night. I made a point of not saying anything, because I knew that once I mentioned Rohmer, I’d have to spill out everything about my evenings with Clara. At first they wouldn’t suspect anything, but before long they’d sniff out a rat and start plying me with questions, and my evasive measure would only give me away. Which is why they kept prodding. And which was exactly what happened once Julia seemed to remember that I loved Rohmer, didn’t I? I did, I said, continuing to stare at my food. Had I been to see any of the movies this week? Yes. Which ones had I seen? Before I could answer with All of them, the Forsham husband said he’d once seen a Rohmer film but still couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. He doesn’t appeal to everyone, said Julia, who suddenly recalled seeing a Rohmer film with me a few years earlier. I tried to change the subject. The Forsham woman thought there was something sick and twisted in wanting to touch a minor’s knee. Her husband couldn’t agree more: “He likes the knee more than he likes the woman it belongs to. Fetishistic!” “My point exactly,” echoed his wife, “fetishistic.” Julia brushed the comment aside and told the Forshams’ son to keep his fingers off the Jell-O unless he was going to eat it, in which case he had to ask for it. In the kitchen she had described him to me as the most repellent child in the world. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked, turning to me, after giving the boy a second menacing stare. “We could have gone together.” “I went at the last minute,” I said. Was I going tonight? I didn’t think so, I replied, surprised at the total lack of hesitation with which I found myself lying to a woman who was one of my best friends. “Maybe you can bring Lauren along.”

  The thought did not displease me. It freed me from thinking I had to go with Clara only. If Clara did happen to go tonight, well, she’d find me with Lauren, and if not with Lauren, then with friends, and frankly, I’d rather be with good friends than with a prickly Clara out to remind me how little she needed me, with all the friends and all the men in her life, and all her comings and goings uptown and downtown that made me feel like a puny, far-flung planet demoted from satellite to testy asteroid. God knows what she’d been telling her friends about me. Or was she like me: not saying a word about us to anyone for fear of seeing the dying wick of friendship snuffed by the merest breath of gossip? Say nothing, smile, and move on. Say nothing because you’re aching to tell the world but fear no one could possibly understand, but if they did understand, then there’d be nothing special to understand in the first place, would there? Say nothing because you don’t want to see where hope trails off and loses luster and, like a lumpy bolide tailspinning to earth, finally thumps down on the desolate, dark folds of the Siberian tundra. Say nothing, because the two of us were perfectly ready to say there was indeed nothing.

  And yet Clara would be crushed on seeing me with Lauren in a place where we both knew we’d meet if all other plans failed. This was sacred.

  Or would Clara burst out laughing, and so loudly that I’d better think twice before going to the movies with Lauren.

  And then it hit me. Clara could easily show up at the movies with someone else. The thought sent me into an instant frenzy, and I could see myself free-falling into a pit of anger and despair. What would I say if I saw her with another man? Leaning on his shoulder once they sat down. Or standing together at the entrance, drinking coffee, trying to decide where to sit, chatting up Phildonka about Amerikon wezer. After the movies, if it’s still raining, they’ll wait outside the main entrance to the theater.

  Where would I be, then?

  To forestall this new wave of anxiety, I came up with a brilliant compromise: I would be willing to give up Lauren altogether on condition that Clara not show up with another man.

  The idea had come to me the moment I imagined Clara putting herself in my place and guessing that I’d probably want to go to the movies with another woman tonight. She must have figured, however, that I’d renounce taking someone if she too agreed not to go with another person. I could just see her sorting this knot out, smiling abstractly at my smile once she saw how, in this as well, our thoughts ran on the same lane. This kind of thinking aroused me. Thinking she was thinking what I was thinking, and enjoying it, as I was enjoying it, reminded me of our hug by the bakery past three in the morning. I wanted to be with her now, both of us partly naked in one of the bedrooms upstairs in Rachel’s house, tripping over the fire trucks as we finally locked one of the bedroom doors, Perse me, perse me hard, harder, harder still.

  Maybe I wasn’t going to call Lauren after all.

  “Why not?”

  Someone else intervened: “Just give me this Lauren’s number, and I’ll call her.”

  “And tell her what?”

  “Tell her for starters that she’s always welcome to come here. There’s always a plate, a spoon, a knife, and a fork here for new friends.”

  How I loved the sounds of these words: A plate, a spoon, a knife, and a fork. Where would I be without them?

  There was a time when I too was a stranger here. Rachel might have told Julia the same exact words about me: Tell him there’ll always be a plate, a spoon, a knife, and a fork here for him.

  Clara was right: others were important, and sometimes they’re all that stands between us and the ditch. Why wouldn’t such an idea have occurred to me—that others were important—why did I have to fish it out from under a sheet of ice in an ice-fishing hut? A plate, a spoon, a knife, and a fork.

  Would that they had said this about Clara now.

  “You’re not saying anything, and I don’t like it,” said Rachel, breaking the silence around me with another one of her prods.

  “I’m eating,” I replied, trying to suggest that if I was quiet it was also my way of avoiding saying anything unkind to the Forshams.

  “You’re so weird today. You’re hiding something, I know it,” she said, continuing to speak to me.

  “And?”

  “I think we should toss him in a blanket.”

  “Someone get a blanket.”

  Rachel’s four-year-old boy, whose loyalty I thought I’d purchased with a fire truck, was the first to race upstairs. He returned with his five-by-three-foot blanky.

  Someone insisted they find a real blanket.

  “Okay, I’ll tell everything,” I said.

  Which was when I rea
lized that the one thing I wanted most right then was to talk to everyone, the Forshams included, about Clara—tell the world about this woman who with three words six days ago had jiggled my universe and turned it to Jell-O.

  Rachel’s ex replenished my wine.

  I took a sip and for a moment was quiet, because I didn’t know how to begin. “There is someone,” I said. “Or, at least, there was. I don’t think there is any longer.”

  “A phantom woman. I love it. And?”

  “We met on Christmas Eve.”

  “Yes, and?”

  “And nothing. We went out a few times. Nothing happened. Now it’s over.”

  Silence.

  Rachel’s ex: Did you steal the jewels?

  Mrs. Forsham: What a terrible question.

  Me: I did not steal her jewels. But she offered to let me see them.

  The ex: And?

  Me: I took a rain check.

  A man named David: He’s lost his mind.

  The ex again: Do you even like her?

  My answer caught me by complete surprise. “Immensely,” I said.

  Julia: So what’s wrong with her?

  Me: She’s flighty, arrogant, prickly, caustic, mean, dangerous, maybe perfect.

  The ex: I see a very long winter. Go to the cave, open sesame, plunder the jewels, handle the thieves.

  A moment of silence.

  Rachel: You’re not going to call Lauren?

  Me: I’m not going to call Lauren.

  Rachel: Not nice.

  •

  Later that afternoon we decided to walk the dogs. I walked next to Rachel on our way to the park and told her about my evenings with Clara after the movies, the hours at the bar, the dancing by the jukebox, the walk back through Straus Park, the nights when I was sure all was lost, the heartthrob when I was proven wrong, the night when life put everything on the table, then took everything back and put the cards away.

  We were walking into the park, as we always did when we went out as a group, and were headed to the tennis courts and beyond that toward the tennis house, which, by early twilight that day, seemed already sunk in darkness, its two puny lamps scarcely lighting the way across the bridge leading over to the icy reservoir. All I need is for the ice to start cracking and I’ll want to run away, be elsewhere. But we were already elsewhere, lost in a winterborne forest, away from the tall buildings off Ninety-third and Central Park West, cast in Corot’s winterscapes, where twilight had blurred the colors to pallid earth tones right in the very heart of Manhattan. Another country, another century, our two dogs scampering around on the grounds of a small provincial French town. This part of Manhattan had never seen me with Clara and should not have reminded me of her. But because it reminded me of places she and I had invoked on the terrace that night, my mind was immediately drawn to her. It would be nice to go to France from here. Walk down Ninety-fifth, buy something quick to eat along the way, and be there in plenty of time. I wanted her to be with us now. This wasn’t elsewhere at all. The set was right, but the play and the players all wrong.