Eight White Nights

by André Aciman

  “He did call—but with him one never knows,” Clara added, turning to Rachel for support. “Did he tell you how the idiot—me, that is—ended up going to the movies all by herself, hoping to run into genius here?”

  “He did say something about going and not going, but then going and not going. We all told him he had to go.”

  “Did he say why he wouldn’t go?”

  “He looked upset.” Then, turning to me: “Is it okay for me to say you looked upset?”

  Yes, it was okay for her to tell the world I was upset. And no, how could I possibly mind? Would she have the good tact not to mention Lauren, though?

  “What happened at the movie theater?”

  “Aside from the fact I was alone in the dark with every sexual pervert ready to pounce on an innocent single girl—nothing. Even the usher hit on me.”

  “So, did you punish him?”

  “Who? The usher? Or Oskár?”

  “Oscar,” said Rachel, without the accent mark.

  Rachel smirked as she spoke my nickname for the first time, trying to hide her hesitation. She was tasting a strange dish she didn’t want anyone to know she’d never heard of before and wasn’t quite going to swallow until making sure it agreed with her. “Oskár,” she said, as though she’d just discovered an amusing new mask on my face, a new me she was still reluctant to admit into her world and whom everyone in her house was sure to talk about later, certainly behind my back. It made me feel that this new identity, which Clara had cemented the day we’d driven up to Hudson, was no more me than a new pair of shoes I’d been parading in all week in the hope that everyone might think they’d long been integrated into my wardrobe, but whose price tag, as far as Rachel was concerned, was still showing and was not to be removed until those who knew me better had decided that they matched the real me. “So you forgave him?”

  “I did try to make him pay for it, but I always fail at making men pay.”

  This was certainly not the Clara I knew. Was she attempting some sort of us-against-them solidarity with Rachel, or was this her oblique way of undercutting Rachel’s attempt to tease me for my new name?

  “Actually,” she continued, “we made up. He had the wisdom to call last night.”

  I knew what Rachel was thinking. We must have slept together last night.

  It occurred to me that Clara knew exactly what had crossed Rachel’s mind, and so as not to disabuse her, she reminded Orla that they really had to finish their shopping, got up, put on her coat, and, just as she was saying goodbye to everyone, leaned down and gave me a moist, hard kiss, tongue all the way in my mouth. “Bis bald.”

  If anything could have made physical contact between us mean so little, this was it. Had we reached perfunctory touching already? Or was this her way of reminding me that, after last night, there were no more holds barred? Or was this intended for Rachel and not me? Or was this a replay of Inky’s kiss?

  •

  A short while later, Rachel started putting mittens on her son and insisted on wrapping a scarf around the child’s neck. The boy struggled; eventually she relented.

  “Will we see you tonight, Oskár?”

  “Probably,” I said, ignoring the lambent rise in her voice as she spoke my nickname.

  She knew she’d irritated me. She also knew I wasn’t speaking the truth.

  “Well, try. Bring her along too.”

  As she put her gloves on, she couldn’t help herself: “She is stunning.”

  My shrug-in-silence was meant to pass for unassuming agreement.

  “Don’t do that!”

  “Do what?” I asked.

  “This.” She mimicked the postured indifference on my face. “She didn’t take her eyes off you.”

  “Her eyes off me?”

  “You’re the most exasperating person I know. Olaf, you explain it to him. Sometimes I think you purposely avoid seeing things. As if you’re scared you’d have to get undressed with the people you really care for and God forbid they should see your pipi.”

  As soon as Rachel left, Olaf couldn’t contain himself.

  “Cunts, all of them.”

  “She may have a point.”

  Olaf shrugged his shoulders as though to mean, Yes, she may, still a cunt.

  His wife had asked him to order a case of Champagne for tonight, but he had completely forgotten, and now he worried they wouldn’t deliver it on time. Then, with his typical expansive bear hug, he embraced me, uttering his usual salutation, which was “Strength and honor” followed by “Stay hard.”

  “She’s the one you were going to tell me about?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Figures.”

  “And yours?” I asked.

  “Don’t ask. You don’t want to know.”

  •

  If I called Clara now, I could offer to join them while they were shopping. I could just see all three of us inside a packed Fairway. Laughter. Laughter. Eggs—I saw her saying—We’ll need eggs for tomorrow morning.

  I was soaring.

  Just hope you don’t pay dearly for this.

  When I got home early that afternoon, I decided to take a nap. Was it my way of restarting a day that had gone well so far and having it all over again? Or was it the lure of clean pressed sheets that beckoned—crisp, taut, and lightly starched, as I like them? Or was it the rapture of the afternoon sun slumbering like a cat on my bed, where I knew I’d doze off listening to music?

  I had promised to call her in a few hours and wanted nothing more now than to coddle the vaguest thoughts of her and take these thoughts to bed with me, the way we take a wish we suspect may never be granted but whose contour, once we’ve shut our eyes, we begin to unpeel, layer after layer, leaf after leaf, as though hope were an artichoke whose heart lies so deeply buried that we could afford to take our time, mince our steps, step back, sidestep, take forever.

  If we weren’t fated to be lovers, or friends, or casual whatevers, well, I’d sleep that off too. In the mood I was in, I too didn’t give a damn about getting hurt, just as I didn’t care if she got hurt. Just get in bed, curl up, think of her with me, our bodies cuddling and canoodling like the two spooning halves of Venice, the space between us we’ll call the Grand Canal and the footbridge my Rialto. My corvus. My Guido. My Lochinvar. My Finnegan. My Fortinbras.

  Why didn’t you come for dinner?

  Because I picked up resentment in your voice.

  Why didn’t you say something, then?

  Because I knew you were angry and there’d be more double-talk.

  What double-talk?

  This double-talk.

  Can I tell you something, then?

  Don’t you think I know already, don’t you think I know?

  Oh, Clara, Clara, Clara.

  •

  It was already past five when I woke up. There were three missed calls on my answering machine, two hang-ups and one from Clara. Had I slept so soundly that I hadn’t heard the phone ring and missed her voice once my machine picked up? When I listened to her message, she seemed inexplicably irked and fatigued: “You could at least pick up!” I checked my cell. But no one had called. “I’ve been calling everywhere. I can’t believe I spent all this time tracking such a pitiful, pitiful man.” I could feel the numbness and rising nausea in my chest. Was I as vulnerable as all that? All this well-being suddenly zapped because of a phone message?

  I thought we’d made up last night, and at Starbucks today she couldn’t have looked happier to see me, her palm not leaving my face as soon as I rushed out to greet her in the cold. Now this? As the five o’clock darkness kept closing in on the day, it finally struck me that this was the worst possible way to welcome New Year’s. Was it a preview of the coming year, or a finish to a terrible one? Or, in Olaf’s words, was it still too soon to tell?

  Then I realized. These were last night’s phone messages, not today’s. Could anyone have sounded so enraged? No wonder she sounded so curt when I called her from Rachel�
��s!

  I shaved, took a long shower, and, for good luck, decided to do exactly what I’d done last week: drop in on my mother again, wear the same black shoes, same dark clothes, same belt even; then dashed off, caught the first cab on the side street, and straight off to Mother’s building, thinking to myself what I’d caught myself thinking of last week as well: Hope she’s well, or well enough, hope I don’t have to stay long, hope she won’t bring him up again, remember to buy two bottles afterward exactly as I’d done last week, then hop on the M5, it’ll give me time to look out the windows and stare at the snow and the ice floes and at the scant traffic on Riverside Drive and think of nothing, perhaps think of my father, or simply forget to think of him, which is what happened last week on the bus when I promised to think of him and had simply allowed my thoughts to drift.

  Mother was all the way at the back of the apartment, in her bedroom, so that, after opening the front door, I had to walk down the long, dark corridor, turning on the lights along the way as I walked past closed doors—she kept the old bedrooms and bathrooms closed, she said, because it gets cold by nightfall. Perhaps she had stopped enjoying the illusion there were others in the house and had shut the door on them. Her old mother-in-law, her husband, my brother, my sister, me.

  I found her next to the old Singer, hemming a skirt. “Hardly anyone comes anymore,” she said, meaning You don’t come often enough. She didn’t know whether to give away the skirt or mend it. Mending it made more sense. If it didn’t work, she’d simply throw it away. In any event, it kept her busy, she said. I’ve grown smaller.

  I promised to think of her too on the bus. But, with one thing and another, I knew I might totally forget. I’d be thinking of Clara. The last time I was here I hadn’t met Clara yet, didn’t even know, couldn’t possibly guess what lay in store for me that night. Fancy that! I had come, dawdled awhile making small talk, then left, bought Champagne, gotten on the M5 bus, done so many meaningless small things, and all of them belonged to a life where Clara didn’t even exist yet. What was life like before Clara? Now I wondered about the old days, which weren’t so very old, when we’d celebrate New Year’s with a wine tasting by covering the labels on the bottles and managing to fool even the connoisseurs among his guests. I remembered the crowd of friends back then as people milled about the living room, the food and desserts heaped in pyramids upon the tables, and Mother’s baked prunes wrapped in bacon, as we all waited to see which wine was voted best, and the laughter, and the noise, and Mother rushing back and forth, making sure the vote was in before the chimes of midnight, followed by my father’s usual apology for using last year’s little speech in rhyming couplets. I know he would have liked Clara.

  Outside, on the terrace, where he chilled the white wines, he’d asked me to help before uncorking the bottles. We stood still in the cold weather with just our shirts on, staring at this black-and-white Manhattan night, making out echoes of the merrymaking from the neighbors’ crowded rooms across the tower, two years ago today, Theirs is the real party, ours is make-believe. He’d taken me aside and said, with veiled distemper in his voice, Why don’t you just marry her, which meant, Why don’t you just marry anyone and bring us children before we’re gone—twins for the price of one, so it’ll be faster. Then, changing the subject, he’d stare through the glass door into our crowded living room: “Just look at your mother, catering to everyone but me, Xanthippe the shrew, if ever there was one.”

  I was wrapping numbered red paper napkins around each bottle of wine to hide the label, applying Scotch tape tightly around the napkin while he held a finger to it to hold it in place, as he automatically did when helping me tie a difficult package, his way of apologizing for the improvised homily about children and twins and the chronic distemper in his voice.

  I remember how Livia had come out onto the terrace to smoke just as he was finishing his little talk. She too would help me wrap the starched napkins around each set of silverware while our Brazilian cook was putting the finishing touches to her yearly bombino, the music filtering in through the glass window. I placed both hands on Livia’s hips, spun her gently around, and proceeded to dance a few steps with her on the freezing terrace, then back into the living room, my rakish whim passing for tacit reassurance intended for my father, meaning, See, Dad, I’m working on it, knowing the whole thing was a fib, because I knew he knew she knew we wouldn’t last a month, a season, ten days. “What were you two speaking about?” she’d asked.

  “Nothing,” absentmindedly.

  “About me, wasn’t it?” She knew he was growing to like her. It was just like her to put two and two together, minus my dissembled nothing, and come out with Dad’s pep talk about kids.

  Not even ten days, I kept thinking. My father must have caught that look on my face as I watched her go back inside and turn to the other guests in the room. “Funny how they cater to everyone but us—as if they’ve always known we’d never love them a single bit.”

  •

  “So where to tonight?” my mother asks.

  “Party.”

  “Just one?”

  “Just one.” Obviously I’d abandoned the idea of going to Rachel’s tonight.

  “Going with someone?”

  “With, without. Unclear.”

  “Unclear to you or unclear to her?”

  “That too is unclear.”

  Mother snickers. Some things never change. Did I need anything? No. Had just come to wish her a Happy New Year. Well, if I had nothing better to do later tonight, maybe I could drop by again—always a sap when it comes to Champagne on New Year’s. There’s a cold bottle in the fridge, one never knows. Maybe, I say, meaning, Yes, but don’t bother waiting up for me. “At least try,” she throws in, a last appeal. I say nothing.

  “Just be an angel, could you replace one of these bulbs for me?”

  No wonder it feels like a mausoleum in her house. I dig out a spare bulb in the pantry, stand on a chair, remove the dead one, and twist in a new bulb. “Finally,” she exclaims; now she can see me, she adds. I am about to put on my coat.

  One more thing, she almost apologizes. That coffeemaker I’d bought her for Christmas, would I mind terribly going over how it works?

  I know what she wants. She doesn’t want me to leave, at least not just yet. Oh, stay another minute, will you! So I take out two capsules of espresso, fill the water tank, plug in the machine, push the red button, and wait until the green light stops blinking. She wants to try it herself this time. We go through the motions once again.

  Two minutes later we are sitting at the breakfast table, drinking two foaming cups of decaf cappuccino.

  He would have loved this, she adds, stirring listlessly.

  I hate it when she starts in about him—“I know, I know,” she apologizes, and right away lights a cigarette. But then she remembers and makes a silent motion to put it out. No, don’t stop, I say, it doesn’t bother me. Just because I’m trying to quit smoking doesn’t mean I’m obliged to hate cigarettes. The same, I suddenly realize, might be said of people, of so many things. Just because you can’t have them doesn’t mean . . .

  My mother must have read my mind or been on the same wavelength herself. “Ever hear from that Livia woman?” We’ve made the same connection, yet neither wishes to disclose the train of thought that led from cigarettes to Livia. “She used to smoke a lot,” she adds, as though to cover up her tracks, “didn’t she?” All the time, but no, I hadn’t heard from her at all. Just like you to blow up bridges behind you. Sometimes, she says, we never want to see people again for fear we still care. Or that they still do. Sometimes we turn from our past and look away in shame. But few of us let go. We find others. What’s hard is having to start all over again with the little that’s left each time.

  She catches her breath, puffs, then looks away. She’s trying to ask me something.

  “Is this new person better than Livia?”

  “Better, worse, too soon—or too late to tell. Who know
s.”

  “You’re a funny one.”

  She stubs out her cigarette halfway. She looks at me and then past me.

  “I met someone.”

  She met someone.

  “You met someone?”

  “Well, that’s not quite accurate. He’d heard about Dad and decided to call one day.”

  “And?”

  “He’d lost his wife a few years back.”

  I must look either dumbstruck or totally vacant.

  “So?”

  “We were together once.”

  “You were together once.”

  I find it hard to think of her with anyone but the man I’d seen her with all my life.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “There’s nothing to understand. I used to know him long before your father. He went away West for a year, maybe more, he said. Then I met your father.”

  She makes it sound so heartless, so savage almost.

  “How did he take it?”

  “Not well. He found someone out West and got married even before I did. Of course, I never forgave him. Never forgave him each time your father and I bickered, and we bickered all the time at first. Never forgave him when the ice I walked on cracked under me to remind me that Dad was just a man who’d been put there to tide me over.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. We had a few dinners. He’s with his daughters tonight. But he said he might show up. Though with him, you never know.”

  Now I understood the bottle of Champagne.

  What did he want from her?

  “Who is he?” I finally asked her.

  “Listen to you. Who is he?” She smiles expansively, mimicking my tone. “Soon you’ll be asking what he earns or how he plans to support me.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s just that I worry.”

  “For me? Are you sure it’s worry you feel?”

  I shrug my shoulders.

  “If it’s any consolation, your father knew. He knew from the very start. Now, thirty years later, this man calls. We’re widowers, he says. That we certainly are, I say. It took a lot of courage.”