News from you, I hope, prontissimo!
Distant as ever, devoted as usual,
Immie
From: Claire Berlinski [email protected]
Date: August 19, 2003 06:50 AM
To: Imran Begum [email protected]
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Booked!
Why ten to twelve months? And why age 33–37? Christ it’s hot. Too hot to write more, sorry.
xxxC.
His reply, as usual, came at the end of the fifty-minute analytic hour.
From: Imran Begum [email protected]
Date: August 19, 2003 07:58 AM
To: Claire Berlinski [email protected]
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Booked!
Dear Distant Friend,
In my experience, for at least ten months my judgment of any woman to whom I’m attracted is thoroughly queered by fantasy and idealization. I would prefer someone my own age, since partnerships between men and women separated by more than five years in age are inherently neurotic, but considerations of fertility are paramount, so I’ll have to make do with a compromise. Younger women are rather attractive to me and I still dip my toe in periodically, but I’m very clear about the context. It’s like dining out at a special restaurant. A yearly treat but not like the daily eggs, bacon, bread, and beans that we must live on. Conceptual caviar, we might call it. The wise person knows where the edge of the ledge is and doesn’t fall off the mountains. Next patient is Anna, 55, judgmental and abusive. Like doing therapy with Goebbels. Must run.
As ever,
Immie
On the following scorching hot day, Imran had an anxiety attack.
From: Imran Begum [email protected]
Date: August 20, 2003 06:45 AM
To: Claire Berlinski [email protected]
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Booked!
C. Quite frightened about my upcoming foray into speed dating. Thinking about it brings on hollowness in stomach, tightness in chest, sensitivity to noise and light, breathlessness, loss of appetite (70%) and loss of sexual desire (45%). I have an unpleasant fantasy of facing twenty painful romantic rejections in less than an hour. Must run to buy new shirts, braces, socks, bowties, colognes, and cuff links. Love, ~I.
I was not particularly worried on his behalf, however, and responded right away to tell him so. Imran was unusually attractive to women, partly because he was a fine-looking man, but in larger part because after years of practicing psychotherapy, he would by habit immediately ask any woman he met about her emotional life, then, also by habit, arrange his body and features to suggest he was listening compassionately, actively, and without judgment. This caused approximately forty to forty-five percent of the women he dated (according to his statistics) to unburden themselves to him with unusual candor and then to fall in love with him, although when he wrote about this, he placed “fall in love” in quotation marks, for he found the sudden intensity of their emotions suspect.
That said, Imran was lovable. A more curious student of human nature you could not hope to meet, nor a man more touchingly devoted to the ideal of curing pain and easing suffering. I was certain that for the right woman—an extremely punctual one—he would make a wonderful husband.
• • •
The canicule entered its third unrelenting week. I was irritated with the elderly Hungarian woman below me, who complained again that I was running the tub too often. I was irritated with the shopkeeper at the appliance store down the street, who had a fan sitting right in his window but refused to sell it to me because it was the display fan, not the selling fan. I was irritated with the old ladies in the grocery stores who never thought to get their wallets out while the clerk was ringing up their purchases. And when several days later I had still received no reply from [email protected], I found myself irritated with him, too.
That evening, the smell of ozone entered through the open window, and I heard a portentous rumbling. Perhaps, I thought hopefully, it might be about to rain? It had to be, I decided, and determined to go for a run by the Seine—something I had not done since the accident.
The whole sky turned dark purple as I stepped outdoors. I set out at a trot through the Paris Plage. Bertrand Delanoë, the first openly gay mayor of Paris, had transformed the banks of the Seine for the summer into a faux beach. Two thousand tons of sand, potted palm trees, little café tables, and parasols had been set up along the river. The press kept talking about what a terrific, openly gay idea this was. I usually liked to run down the banks of the Seine to avoid traffic, but with the beach there, I had to dodge and weave through crowds of men in little leopard-print bikinis. There was nowhere to swim; everyone just sat there, sweating, in the pollution. The rain I was hoping for had not begun, and everyone looked hot and miserable, except the giggling all-girl trombone ensemble at the end of the plage. They were playing their trombones and smoking at the same time, all barefoot and gamine despite the heat.
I passed through the dreaded Tunnel of Piss, which in the canicule reeked even more than usual. Still no rain. I wondered why French men, like dogs, felt it appropriate to urinate anywhere, any time, the moment the urge struck them. I ran under the bridge where the homeless people lived. Paris still has great winos, real 1950s-style winos, not the horrible ghoul-eyed crackheads you see in American cities. They look so happy to be drunkards, as if nothing could be finer than to spend a great day lying in the gutter, surrounded by empty wine bottles, reeking to high heaven and singing old French songs about la bicyclette and les femmes. In the winter, the winos under that bridge make elaborate, wonderful-smelling meals on their camp stoves, like boeuf bourguignon and coq au vin; they dine at tables made from overturned crates covered with checkered tablecloths, decorated with candles and single red roses stuck in empty wine bottles. But in the canicule it was way too hot to cook. They sprawled on the ground in their underwear, slowly scratching their fleas.
I reached the houseboats. Still no rain. A houseboat dweller was placing an elaborate houseboat picnic on his wooden table, with candelabra, champagne in fluted glasses, and at least six kinds of pâté. His picnic looked better than his geraniums; although it was high summer, the canicule had twisted and shriveled the plants on all of the houseboat decks. The heat had even turned the trees prematurely autumnal, and as I ran I kicked up piles of dead brown leaves.
Still no rain.
At the Eiffel Tower, the Japanese tourists were standing on the bridge with their video cameras, making homemade movies of Japanese tourists standing in front of the Eiffel Tower. People with video cameras always forget that they’re in a real city, where other people need to use the street, and not a movie set. When they see a runner coming their way, they move right into the center of the sidewalk rather than stepping to the side. If you shout at them, they look confused and they giggle, but they still don’t get out of the way. Somewhere out there, there’s a Japanese businessman whose home movie of Paris during the canicule stars Claire Berlinski, in her sweaty running clothes, yelling at him to move.
The heat still had not broken. Above me the clouds had dissipated, and the crepuscular sky turned brown again. Now it looked as if it weren’t going to rain after all. It had become intensely humid as well as hot. I was dehydrated—I had thought it unnecessary to bring change with me to buy water because I had been sure it was about to rain. I turned back, running at first, then walking, then limping. The city was a hot mirage of lavish lampposts, gilded statues, golden ornaments, winking gargoyles, nymphs and cherubs, crabby Parisians and more crabby Parisians—all of us hating one another in that God-awful heat. The Seine was churning and turbid. A Bateaux Mouches filled with tourists struggled to stay on course; for a moment I thought hopefully that it might crash into a bridge.
When I returned, I checked my e-mail. There was a message from [email protected].
From: [email protected]
Date: August 23, 2003 08:22 PM
T
o: Claire Berlinski [email protected]
Subject: Re: Re: (No subject)
Dear Claire Berlinski,
I apologize for my delay in response. I am writing to you with a heart overflowing with grief. My mother has died, and like any orphan I must now undertake the journey to come in solitude.
Strange, is it not? that of the myriads who
Before us pass’d the door of Darkness through,
Not one returns to tell us of the Road,
Which to discover we must travel too.
With all my respect,
Arsalan
• • •
As I lay in the tub my irritation dissipated, replaced by an uneasy melancholia. I wasn’t sure why—after all, I didn’t know his mother. When I returned to my desk, however, an e-mail from Samantha distracted me. She was in Los Angeles and woke up roughly as I was winding down the day. Samantha—or Sam, as her masculine avatar called himself—had placed Sam’s profile on Nerve.com.
From: Samantha Allen [email protected]
Date: August 23, 2003 09:02 PM
To: Claire Berlinski [email protected]
Subject: Nerve
So far, so good! I seem to be a hit with the Nerve ladies. Hubba-hubba! They really appreciate my flair for the romantic. You know, the effect of a tender letter—or better still a poem—on the straight woman’s psyche is astonishingly powerful. Hilariously so. Why is that?
To: Samantha Allen [email protected]
Date: August 23, 2003 09:08 PM
From: Claire Berlinski [email protected]
Subject: Re: Nerve
Gosh, Sam, that’s probably because they’re getting about a hundred misspelled illiterate letters a day from men whose first question is whether they can see more photographs. Real men, you see, suffer from a terrible fear that they might be writing to a woman who’s secretly a wide load.
From: Samantha Allen [email protected]
Date: August 23, 2003 09:12 PM
To: Claire Berlinski [email protected]
Subject: Re: Re: Nerve
Well, Sam’s got real dates with three lucky Nerve ladies this weekend! How should I act? What do you straight women like in a man?
To: Samantha Allen [email protected]
Date: August 23, 2003 09:18 PM
From: Claire Berlinski [email protected]
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Nerve
Ask her about her emotional life, then arrange your body and features to suggest you’re listening compassionately, actively, and without judgment. Oh, and ask her about her father. Most women have screwed-up relationships with their fathers. The more screwed-up her relationship with her father, the more drawn to you she’ll be. It’s a transference thing.
That was Imran’s special trick. I’d seen it in action. My brother had tried the Imran Method. He reported that the results were astonishing, but the method had one terrible drawback: you had to spend hours listening to women talk about their fathers.
After I sent off my reply I began reading the latest posts on my favorite long-distance running forum, where an argument about shin splints had broken out. Just after the moderator posted to remind members of the forum’s regulations on obscenity, Samantha wrote back to me.
From: Samantha Allen [email protected]
Date: August 23, 2003 09:23 PM
To: Claire Berlinski [email protected]
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Nerve
I should talk about their feelings? That’s what women want? So what you’re saying, right, is that straight women want men who are really just women in men’s bodies?
To: Samantha Allen [email protected]
Date: August 23, 2003 09:24 PM
From: Claire Berlinski [email protected]
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Nerve
Oh, no. Do not propose splitting the check.
From: Samantha Allen [email protected]
Date: August 23, 2003 09:26 PM
To: Claire Berlinski [email protected]
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Nerve
Huh. No wonder men hate women.
Samantha didn’t write again that evening. Perhaps she had gone out. I began reading the Drudge Report. When I came across an article about Iran, I remembered that I should reply to the sad message I’d received from [email protected]. I composed a note using more or less the words that I had used the night before when a member of my runners’ forum reported that his wife had died of skin cancer.
From: Claire Berlinski [email protected]
Date: August 23, 2003 10:22 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Re: Re: (No subject)
Dear Arsalan,
I’m sorry for your loss. Please accept my sincere condolences.
Yours truly,
Claire Berlinski
I looked at what I’d just written and thought it sounded cold. It was tricky, though; I truly had no idea who he was, and I knew nothing of his mother, so I could hardly write a touching elegy to her memory. I erased the message and started again.
From: Claire Berlinski [email protected]
Date: August 23, 2003 10:30 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Re: Re: (No subject)
Dear Arsalan,
All I know of you is that you live in Iran, and you enjoy spy novels, as I do. We are perfect strangers. But even a stranger knows what it means to lose a mother, and I can imagine acutely the loss you must feel. Please accept my sincere condolences.
With my sympathy,
Claire
Before going to sleep, I made a point of sending an especially nice e-mail to my mother.
• • •
It was windy and overcast when I woke up, and I was surprised to realize, when I looked at the clock, that it was nearly noon. It was the first time in weeks I’d been able to sleep past dawn. I had come to think of the heat as an intractable, unconquerable enemy, and as I stood up and put my head outside my window, breathing in the cool air, my relief was tempered by suspicion. Was this a bluff?
I went to my computer to check the weather forecast, and before doing that checked my e-mail. A letter from Iran was waiting for me.
From: Arsalan [email protected]
Date: August 24, 2003 09:45 AM
To: Claire Berlinski [email protected]
Subject: (No subject)
Dear Claire Berlinski,
Thank you for your kind and gracious words.
I have taken the last of my mother’s books, her tattered divans of poetry, from her apartment and brought them to mine. I have swept up the things that fall from books. I have found this way an indistinct photograph of my mother, in her wedding gown. I have found a list, in her hand, of things to buy for the Norooz celebrations.
I have sorted, alone, through her possessions . . . her rosewood coffee table . . . her tea set . . . her copper samovar. But what will become of her cat? They were inseparable. She read and he slept on her lap. She slept and he lay on her pillow. He looks at me now reproachfully, and the words of Sa‘di come to my mouth.
No shield of parental protection his head
Now shelters; be thou his protector instead.
So the orphan Wollef is my responsibility now, it is clear. It is what my mother would want.
Poor creature! He knows she is gone forever; I believe this to be so. He wanders from one corner of my unfamiliar apartment to the other and cries. He growls when I try to stroke him. He paces, he searches, he smells the place she sat when last she visited, he waits by the door, listens for her footsteps, wonders when she will come for him.
She has escaped from the cage now, I tell him, her wings spread in the air.
He looks at me; he does not comprehend. There are no words to comfort a cat.
With my sincere respect,
Arsalan
I read the note several times.
I was surprised, of course, to receive such a personal letter. Yet I understood. He had just lo
st his mother, and I had just asked who he was. Perhaps the event prompted him to ask that question of himself, as it might any of us, and if his letter seemed raw and vulnerable, that seemed to me only natural. Who wouldn’t be at a moment like that?
Where had he learned to write such excellent English, I wondered? Perhaps he had been educated in the West—had he left during the Revolution?—but then why had he returned to Iran? What did he do for a living? How old was he?
My mind wandered. The apartment I had seen in the photograph—perhaps it was his mother’s? And the cat I had seen was her cat? Any woman, I thought, so tender with a small animal must surely have been even more tender with a small child.
I imagined my correspondent as a boy, returning from school to that sunny apartment. There was his plump mother standing in the doorway. She had spent the afternoon preparing sweets made of almonds and cardamom, honey and rosewater. The warm smell of baking in the apartment was inseparable from the scent of her skin. They sat together on those plump silk cushions; she poured tea from the samovar into tiny, gold-rimmed glasses. He helped himself to sweets and told her what he had learned that day in school.
My heart went out to him, whoever he was.
CHAPTER TWO
As to people waxing ecstatic about the attention to spy detail . . . umm . . . Google much? You can find all this information online.
Lion Eyes Page 3