by André Aciman
In Straus Park all I’d want to remember is my first night here or the second, or the third, or the night when I came back and stood dazed here after our kiss and could feel everything rise in my chest each time I looked over to the bakery and remembered how I’d pushed her body against the glass panel and kissed her, our hips pressed together, heeding an impulse I thought I’d been following all my life when, in fact, I’d been rehearsing it just for Clara, as everything was rehearsal, and deferral. Do you want us to stay together, or is this one of those bland, mushy-gushy friendships that spilled over into passion one evening when we’d both had too much to drink, tell me again, you sweet, bitter stoneheart, tell me again, did you wish that time stopped for you as well? Am I making sense to you? Am I what you want? Yes. Before you change your mind? I’ve never changed my mind, but if this is how you see me, then I’ve changed my mind—it’s you who can’t and won’t make up yours.
I’d stand there and think of the Magi with their heads ablaze who might show up tonight, their shuffling feet already sinking underground, saying, You shouldn’t be here, why have you left, why are you here? I’m here to think whether I should go back or stay here instead. And? And I don’t know. You feel with a forked heart, and your heart is a muted organ. In five years, as in Rohmer’s film, you’ll bump into her in a beach town in Europe, and she’ll be with children, or you’ll be with children, and you’ll watch and stare and draw the tally of all your might-have-beens. You haven’t changed, she’ll say. Neither have you. Still Printz? I guess. And you, Clara? The same. Still lying low? Still lying low. You remember, then? I remember everything. And so do I. Well? Well.
By the time I’m my father’s age with distemper in my soul and one chaste love to look back on, standing on a terrace thinking of wine tastings and of stubbed-out cigarettes free-falling to the ground and of parties across our tower that are always the real parties, will I have learned to live all this down, or would it turn into imperishable dream making all of it—from the day it stopped when it started, to the day it started when it stopped on nothing more than a baker’s wall one hundred yards from here, one hundred years from now, a hundred years ago. From a small park in Berlin to Straus Park in New York. The gas jets of a century ago and the unborn stonecutter a century from now, centuries apart. Immeasurable.
So what should I do now? Stand and wait? Stand and wonder? What do I do?
And it would be one of the lampposts in the park that would break the silence.
Did you expect guidance? An answer? An apology?
Go back, the voice would say; if I could go back, if only I could go back.
I’d know that voice among millions.
And from Straus Park I’d walk back to the corner of 106th and Riverside and watch the people upstairs leaning their backs against the windows as I’d seen them do a week ago, when it was cold outside and their candlelit faces beamed with laughter and premonition, all holding glasses in their hands; some, I could guess, leaning on the piano where the singer with the throaty voice made everyone sing carols. And I’d even say hello to Boris, who would know me by now, and I’d watch him stick his arm inside the elevator and press the penthouse button as he’d done last week, and no sooner would I be let into the apartment than there’d be a chorus of hellos. Well, what do you know, he’s back, Orla would say, I’ll run and tell Clara. No, I will, says Pablo, she’s upset with you, and standing her up last night didn’t help. We’re all headed to the Cathedral of St. John, want to come with us? And before I can answer, a Champagne flute is handed to me. I recognize the wrist, your wrist, your wrist, your sweet, blessed, God-given I-worship-your-wrist. “Ist ein Traum, this is a dream,” she says, “and the New Year’s just begun.”