Dreams of Bread and Fire

by Nancy Kricorian

  He slid his hand under the band of her pants.

  “I don’t have my birth control handy,” Ani whispered.

  “I’ve got a condom.”

  “How resourceful of you.”

  “A Boy Scout is always prepared.”

  “I never made it past Brownie. I think I still have that beanie and orange tie someplace at home. I got a homemaking badge. One of the requirements was making butter from heavy cream.”

  With his index finger he stilled her lips. “Did anyone ever tell you you talk too much?” he asked with mock seriousness.

  Forget the question marks. She could climb inside here and rest out of the wind. A small fire would make light and warmth for the night. Pine branches sent sparks flying over their heads like exclamation points.

  The next morning Ani woke from cramped sleep with a crick in her neck. She couldn’t believe Van Ardavanian was lying next to her. There was a shadow of a beard on his open face. His eyes were closed, and the long straight lashes fanned above his cheekbones. Ani wanted to lay her head on his chest and feel its warmth and solidity.

  Then panic seized her. What if Van told his grandmother that they were lovers and his grandmother told her grandmother? Amid a circle of pilling cardigans there would be the clucking of tongues, wagging of heads, and a loud chorus of amot kezi, amot kezi. Could she climb over him, sneak out of the caravan, and hitch a ride to Bastia? She’d stow away on a ferry to Marseille and take the TGV back to Paris. Seemed unlikely.

  Alternative plan: maybe they could pretend it never happened.

  be neither sweet and swallowed nor sour and spurned

  After breakfast Ani and Van headed south in the car. In the backseat was a wicker hamper of food that Isabelle had pressed on them as they left. They drove on winding roads lined with terraces bordered by ancient stone walls. Wooden beehives sat in the middle of the terraces. Ani stared out the window, the landscape a sad sweet thing like the frail leaves of an old book dipped in syrup.

  Van paused several times as flocks crossed the road accompanied by craggy-faced old men. The sheep walked on their haunches like women in high heels. The goats were bearded and sarcastic. We own this road, they said, and you are merely passing through history. Our history. Ani wondered if the gray shepherds spoke Italian, French, or Corsican.

  This was the kind of place people should go on their honeymoon, where the landscape’s beauty is sharp and melancholy. It made you feel that life hadn’t changed much in a thousand years. It reminded you how short your own life was and how small you were on the face of the spinning planet. Suddenly an image of herself turning in Van’s embrace flickered through her mind. It made her weak.

  “Reminds me of Armenia,” Van said.

  “When were you there?”

  “A few years ago.” His terse reply didn’t invite further questions.

  Higher up the mountain a snowstorm fell upon them. Slowly wending through the blizzard, they stopped at a small ski lodge at the summit for coffee and hot chocolate and then drove down the mountain, heading toward Ajaccio. A few hours later in the port town the azure ocean glittered under a brilliant sun. They parked the car on a street lined with expensive boutiques.

  “First it’s nineteenth-century peasants and now we’re in a fancy resort,” Ani commented.

  “There is a certain grimness in the contrast,” Van replied.

  Entering the lobby of a modern building, they took the elevator to the sixth floor. The apartment, which belonged to one of Pascal’s friends, had white walls and spare, angular furniture. There were two rooms, a small kitchen, and a bath. Van said he had some errands to do so Ani set herself up on the balcony with a book. It didn’t occur to her to ask where he was going.

  When darkness began to fall, Ani set the glass-topped dining room table with dishes she found in the kitchen and the provisions from Isabelle’s hamper. She rummaged in the cabinets, coming up with a pair of candles and some matches. She turned off the lights and lit the candles. It was so romantic. There was too much expectation in that kind of light.

  When Van arrived, the floor lamp was on and the candles back in the drawer.

  “You get everything done?” Ani asked.

  “Yup,” he answered.

  “Isabelle packed a banquet. She even put in a bottle of wine.”

  “Looks good,” Van said, taking a seat at the table.

  “Do you want some wine?”

  “No, thanks.”

  Ani stared at the roast chicken on her plate and felt her stomach ball up on itself. She listened to the accusatory clink of his fork and knife against the plate.

  It was all her fault. She was the one who had asked him for a good-night kiss. If she had just kept her mouth shut he wouldn’t be walled off behind a stone grill of silence. She drained the mineral water in her glass and poured some more.

  Van and Ani cleared the table and stood in the narrow kitchen at the sink. She washed; he dried. When they were done Van strode to the living room and unfastened the ties of his sleeping bag, spreading it on the couch. Ani marched to the bathroom with her toothbrush, her gums soon suffering from her vigor. In the bedroom she jerked on her nightclothes and flung herself onto the bed.

  Van called from the living room, “Good night, Ani.” He flicked off the lamp.

  “Good night, Baron Ardavanian,” Ani called back.

  The electric alarm clock glowed on the bedside table. Ani watched the second hand glide around and around the dial. One night on the metro Ani had met a young fireman—un pompier—from Toulon. They ended up strolling along the rue de Rivoli and across the Pont des Arts to the Left Bank, stopping at a café for a hot drink. Didier told Ani that women would call the fire station looking for someone to come by. On the many slow nights when there were no fires one of the guys would be happy to oblige. Ani was incredulous, but Didier solemnly insisted that it was true. She wondered if what had transpired between her and Van was the equivalent of a pompier house call or what Asa referred to as a “mercy fuck.” Ani cringed at the thought.

  “Hey, Ani.” Van called from the next room.

  “Yeah?” she asked.

  “Are you okay?”

  She was not going to repeat her mistake. “I’m fine.”

  Something in her was broken. Her heart was like a piece of defective machinery. It made her fall in love with the absolutely wrong person, one she would never please, one who would always find her wanting. First Asa Willard, whom she had made into a kind of god and worshiped at his frostbitten feet; now Van Ardavanian, her supposed friend and so-called compatriot. He was too fierce in his judgments and expectations. In his own way, he was more of a puritan than her grandmother was. Ani should never have had sex with him.

  Ani continued running down the list of men in her brief and narrow sexual history. Captain Will, for all his chivalry, had never called her Ani but only Nelly, after a black-maned horse. He had never really known her and had treated her like a transient, if cherished, character in the drama of his life.

  Damn. She had filled her belly with mineral water at dinner. She needed to pee. To get to the toilet she would have to pass through the living room.

  Ani tiptoed by Van, who was stretched out on his side with his face to the couch back. Ani grimaced. Well, at least somebody was getting a good night’s sleep.

  As she passed the couch on the return trip, Van turned over.

  “Still awake?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “Me too.” He sat up and patted a spot next to him.

  She sat down. Two feet of dark air churned between them.

  “Ani, we should talk.”

  “Okay,” she said. Let him start.

  “How do you feel about what happened last night?”

  “How do you feel?”
r />   “Well, you seem like you’re mad at me. So I guess it wasn’t such a great idea.”

  “I’m mad at you? You’re the one who wasn’t talking to me all day.”

  “Ani, you weren’t talking to me.”

  “Well, we seem to be having a conversation now. What do you think is going on?”

  “Listen, when I invited you to come on this trip I had no idea how things would turn out between us. I had some business to take care of in Corsica and I thought you—”

  “What kind of business? I thought this was a vacation.”

  “It’s just a figure of speech. I wanted to visit Pascal. And drive around the island. I thought we’d be good company.”

  “But now I wrecked it all,” Ani said miserably.

  “No. It was my fault. Neither of us is in a position to start something like this.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’re on the rebound. And I’m not in the right place either.”

  “Because of Maro?”

  “Maybe that’s part of it. It can’t be something casual because neither of us is like that. And because we’re friends. My work is the main thing right now. I don’t want to get distracted.”

  “Okay, my friend,” Ani said. “Let’s not get distracted. Let’s maintain a hawklike focus on our objectives.”

  “Don’t get pissed off, Ani. Be fair. Admit that you’re confused too.”

  “All right,” she said grudgingly. “But promise you won’t say anything to your grandmother.”

  He laughed. “Is that what you’re worried about?”

  “At this hour of the night I have all kinds of irrational fears,” Ani said. “I’m going to bed.” She stood.

  He tugged on the hem of her shirt. “You forgot something.”

  She sat back down. “That’s my line. Are you asking for trouble?”

  “Just a good-night kiss.” He ran his finger down her neck.

  “We’re both asking for trouble,” she said, leaning into his kiss.

  The next day they drove to Bonifacio, an old town where white cliffs faced south over a shimmering aquamarine sea. The sky was clear, and Van pointed out Sardinia in the distance. From there they drove to the outskirts of town, where a small roadside house looked over the sea. It belonged to another of Pascal’s friends, and Van again had the key. The house was little more than a cabin; in the bathroom there was no tub or shower, only a toilet and a small washbasin.

  Van said he wanted to go running, so Ani headed out for a walk. She was joined by a big dignified dog that came from a neighboring house. Ani and the dog traveled beyond the pavement onto a dirt road leading toward the ocean. Sometimes she followed the dog; sometimes the dog circled around to follow her. They made their way up a small hill, bushwhacking a bit. There was an abandoned shack at the top with a weathered wooden door. On the narrow path leading to the road someone had abandoned his shoes in their steps, and the old boots were filled with cobwebs.

  The next day they returned to Ponte-Leccia, where Pascal and Isabelle served another feast. After dinner, Ani and Van walked in silence across the stony meadow. This was their last night on Corsica. The moon cast shadows on the ground, and the donkey brayed mournfully as they passed.

  In the caravan she dropped onto the narrow bed. He lay down next to her, turning toward her. Their faces were a hairbreadth apart, his gaze so intent that it scared her.

  Pulling back slightly, she whispered, “What’s the secret ­password?”

  “Bonaparte,” he guessed.

  “Think dessert,” she said.

  He was smiling now. “Pakhlava?”

  “Close,” she told him.

  “Khadayif?”

  “Bingo!”

  She kissed him, trying not to think of anything beyond that moment and the feel of his hands moving along her body.

  On the ferry to Marseille they sat side by side watching gulls swoop outside the windows. Ani noticed that although Van didn’t lack passion in private, his public displays of affection were minimal. Asa hadn’t been much for kissing on the street, but he often had his arm around her as they walked, and he pulled her onto his lap even in the library. Ani glanced at Van, imagining sidling into his lap and the look of consternation this would provoke.

  It reminded Ani of her grandparents, whom she knew were devoted to each other in their own old-fashioned way. She had never once seen Baba and Grandma hold hands, let alone kiss, but they were completely dedicated to each other in their daily ­habits. She made his meals. He drove her to her appointments and to church. They never spent a night apart.

  Van reached out and tugged lightly on a lock of Ani’s hair. “I’m really sorry about this, Ani, but I have to make a detour to Switzerland. I’ll drive you as far as the station in Lyon. You can get the train back to Paris.”

  This announcement felt to Ani like a slamming door.

  “What do you have to do in Switzerland?” she asked.

  “It’s for work. When I called in yesterday they told me. It came up at the last minute.” His face was impassive. “I’ll cover the ticket. I know you were counting on driving back together.”

  “You don’t have to pay for the ticket,” said Ani. “I have plenty of money. I didn’t spend a franc in Corsica.”

  The drive to Lyon was tense and silent. Ani scanned Van’s opaque face. His gaze was fixed on the road ahead, and she wondered if he was feeling anything at all. He was like a closed ­market stall, all its wares behind a thick metal shutter that the proprietor rolled down at the end of the business day.

  This was the old loneliness.

  Baba and Grandma were grocery shopping on Saturday afternoon. Ani stood in the hall outside the closed door of the bedroom she shared with her mother.

  When Ani knocked, her mother said, Don’t come in. I need to be alone. Why don’t you go play on the swings?

  Instead Ani pressed her ear to the wooden door and listened to her mother’s muffled crying. Then there was silence. Had her mother fallen asleep? Had her mother stealthily slipped out the window and run away? She would have no mother and no father. She would be altogether abandoned. Ani squeezed her hands into a prayer chapel and asked God to keep her from being an orphan. Just then Grandma had bustled into the kitchen calling, Ani, come see candy I bought you at store!

  Ani wasn’t a kid anymore and nobody was going to bring her fruit slices from the candy counter at the Star Market. She knew the adventure was over. She had seen the island of Corsica and smelled the maquis. The sex had been ardent, but that was behind them now. She would bravely say goodbye and not look back.

  She pressed her heart smaller and smaller. It was a lump of coal, the kind they always threaten you with at Christmas. In one television episode of Superman, Clark Kent had secretly squeezed a bit of coal with such force that it was transformed into a glittering diamond. Ani’s heart was that hard.

  When the car stopped outside the train station in Lyon, Ani reached into the backseat for her pack. As she opened the car door, Van firmly grasped her forearm.

  “Ani, don’t look so sad. I’ll call you as soon as I get back to Paris.”

  Her heart dissolved like sugar in a glass of tea.

  “When?” she asked, hoping her tone didn’t sound as desperate as she felt.

  “A week, ten days at the most.” Here he drew her hand to his face, brushing his lips across her knuckles in the most extravagant gesture he had yet made outside of bed.

  in a foreign place the exiled man will have no face

  On Saturday afternoon, fifteen little girls in pastel dresses drifted into the Bartons’ apartment like so many artificial flowers. Sydney, as befitting the birthday princess, wore a rhinestone tiara and a pink satin dress. She had informed Ani how much the dress cost in French francs and in dollars at the cur
rent exchange rate. Ani supervised the games—pin the tail on the donkey, musical chairs, and a treasure hunt for prizes and candy. Finally Tacey and Ani herded the girls to the table for cake and ice cream.

  In her room that evening Ani perused acceptance letters from graduate programs. The one from Seattle—an application she had made when she thought she wanted to live with Asa—she discarded. The other three she lined up on the table, unable to decide in which city to cast her fate. She felt like a bobbing cork in the ocean searching for a shore. Elena was in New York, and this seemed like as good a reason as any to go there. It was the university where her father had gone to law school and the neighborhood where she had spent the first four years of her life. She filled out the requisite forms and sealed the envelopes.

  In the morning she dropped the letters in the yellow postal box affixed to the wall across from her building. Somehow the thought of the crowded metro or the jammed autobus filled her with dread. She didn’t want to brush up against someone else’s sorrow or be hemmed in by the pulse of other lives. So she walked to the university, reading melancholy on the faces that she passed.

  When she turned to the mirror in the evening she half expected to see herself grown transparent. But there she was, substantial as ever, with sad gray eyes, pale skin, and black hair.

  It had been ten days—she counted them on the calendar again—since Van had dropped her at the train station in Lyon.

  What did it matter? She would be leaving Paris in less than two months. She didn’t need Van. Life would unroll ahead of her like a long narrow carpet that she would walk one step at a time. Come September she would immerse herself in her studies. She would sit in classes all day, read French novels all evening, and then lounge with Elena eating brownies at midnight. She would eventually find someone else to love.

  Day eleven, or rather night eleven, minutes after Ani had shut out her light, the phone rang and she knew it was Van before she lifted the receiver. He was outside the Palais-Royal metro station at a pay phone.