Sun Alley

by Cecilia Stefanescu

‘Emilia, let’s sit down.’

  He spoke to her as you would speak to a sick person, or as he used to talk to the girls when they were visiting someone and he noticed that they were fidgeting. Then, after they sat down and she released a long sigh, things started to fall into place. After another few awkward moments, the conversation centred on the nonsense through which those who haven’t seen each other for a while usually try to retrieve lost time, and through which those who have just got to know each other try to get acquainted. During this time, Emilia only uttered a couple of words. She feared she would give herself away, and at the same time she was amazed how good he was at playing his part: how natural he was when talking to her husband, showing not the slightest trace of remorse, not the tiniest feeling of guilt. He was perfectly composed and only his funny start could have betrayed him. And then a thin hand appeared on his shoulder, its fingers clutching the soft fabric of his T-shirt and tugging it firmly. From behind him, a little girl popped up. Her pale face appeared angry and she looked at him reproachfully.

  ‘Daddy, you left us in the lurch.’

  The father was momentarily struck dumb in front of the elf standing bold upright with her legs apart, her eyes flashing fire at him, but he regained himself in a few seconds and laughed.

  ‘It’s my little girl,’ he explained the obvious.

  ‘Mummy said that you left us in the lurch,’ she repeated, unrelentingly.

  ‘I see. Please, go back. I’ll join you right away.’

  The bland-faced man winked at Dori. ‘Well, I’d rather you all joined us at our table.’

  He had turned to Emilia, addressing the question with a certain affected pompousness. Sal shook his head, trying to slip away, but she was inconvenienced and he had seen her transform before his eyes: the shadows on her face betrayed her feelings so much, showing that she would have done anything to run away from there, to avoid having to play that simulacrum of astonishment, delight and joy, to be friendly with his girls, whom she envied, or with the woman who slept on the other half of his bed. It was when he considered all this that he realised that he felt the need to hurt her and to see her further transformed, disfigured under that appearance of decency and earnestness. It crossed his mind that this humiliation would tame her and persuade her to accept the situation as it was – ugly, demanding, corrupted, unendurable – and to stop seeing it idyllically.

  In no time, the two families were at the same table teeming with sweets, lemonades and scoops of ice-cream, all crammed together like the people surrounding them. The conversation was conducted by Emilia’s husband, who had introduced himself to the members of the whole clan, one by one:

  ‘Matei.’

  Sorin had only heard his name once before, when he and Emilia had met in the post office and they briefly recounted their lives, but he thought that he had forgotten it. He mentioned Matilda whenever it was necessary, but she hadn’t mentioned ‘Matei’ ever since. Amidst the sound of teaspoons touching the glass bowls, digging into the already melting ice-cream scoops that were sliding and mingling their colours and composition, Matilda marvelled, delighted that she had the opportunity at last to meet one of her husband’s childhood friends.

  ‘Even though the friend is a girl,’ she joked. ‘I hope you weren’t lovers!’

  Matei stepped in. ‘I think that we can all use the others’ first names. After all, it’s as if we’ve known each other for a long time.’

  Matilda was the only one to laugh and admit that pleasantries were unnecessary. Matei had visibly recovered his good spirits in the presence of the new acquaintances.

  ‘Tell me, and I hope you won’t think I’m too inquisitive, are you Emilia’s age?’

  Sorin cleared his throat and said yes. The man talking to him was a character. Sorin was oscillating between feeling the impulse to jump at his throat and admiration for the moderation and the sometimes ridiculous maturity he showed. He was neither too improper nor too handsome; neither too smart nor careless. He had a way of placing himself on a par with everyone, even the twins, to whom he would cast a comic glance from time to time.

  ‘I asked you because that’s what I had presumed. I’m three years older, and many times you can feel this difference between me and Emilia, even though it seems so small. Well, some are separated by ten, even twenty years. I’m not talking about this kind of anomaly. But even in our case, you can feel it. Maybe it’s the distance between professions as well – Emilia with her French, while I’m a mathematician. We have totally different taste. She’s more emotional.’

  ‘She always was like that.’

  ‘Really?’

  Matei laughed again, revealing his white, shiny teeth. ‘Well, I would have guessed so. Is it the same with you? With the profession difference, I mean.’

  Matilda suddenly joined in, with a long and serious face. ‘And how! When I met Sorin, I knew that plants mattered to him more than people: if you water them every two days, it means that you love them.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t understand. What does this have to do with plants?’

  ‘Sorin is a botanist.’

  ‘A botanist, is it?’ Matei marvelled. ‘A profession as difficult as mine, if not more so. Where do you work?’

  ‘At the Botanical Gardens.’

  ‘At least it’s a quiet place. You must be able to take the girls there.’

  ‘The girls are crazy about the place,’ Matilda confirmed.

  ‘We should go, too – pay him a visit when we return to Bucharest. To be honest, I haven’t been to the Botanical Gardens since childhood. In school we had to make these herbariums…’

  Matilda became animated. ‘We used to make herbariums as well. And those notebooks we’d pass around full of quizzes everyone would have to answer – we called them oracles. Remember those! I know the questions were silly, but we would read the answers with such excitement… God! I’ll never forget that. Children can be so narcissistic!’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ Sorin asked her.

  ‘Because we actually wanted to see what we looked like to the others – if they loved us and if we had managed to charm them. Aren’t all children seducers? Don’t they all actually want to win over their opponents?’

  Matei shook with laughter and turned to the girls. ‘Listen to that. What do you have to say?’

  The girls made no gesture. They had started to drill deeper inside the ice-cream sauce, which had an eggnog consistency and from which only two hillocks stood up, shining in the sunlight.

  ‘This gentleman asked you a question!’

  ‘Oh, don’t ‘gentleman’ me! They can call me Matei; I want us to be friends. All right?’

  The girls looked up, their faces half smudged with ice-cream, and nodded. Dori stopped with her spoon suspended in mid-air and seemed to think for a while, then half-opened her mouth, looking at Matei. After a break, she asked: ‘What’s an oracle?’ Then she dipped her nose back in her ice-cream.

  The grown-ups laughed; only Emilia had a gloomy look. The white scarf tying her hair back had slipped toward the crown of her head, and the curly hair exploded from somewhere behind the white margin, over her shoulders, giving her a lunatic air. She didn’t dare look at him and she had taken on an absent appearance, ignoring everything around her. She didn’t have the courage to look at Matilda either, though she was busy with the girls anyway. Emilia rarely took part in the general cheerfulness, only putting on an artificial smile like a character in a melodrama.

  He found it hard to recognise the woman he loved in that apparition, and it seemed equally difficult to exchange at least a few words with her: to tell her, for example, that he would be waiting for her at their spot the next morning, to apologise, to explain what had happened. He knitted his eyebrows and turned to the twins, who had just finished eating and were now gathering the traces of caramel off the plate.

  ‘I hope you won’t fall ill again!’

  The man was the first to rise to the bait, as he had expected. �
��What was wrong with them?’

  As if complying with her husband’s unrevealed and hastily brooded plan, Matilda started to chatter about Mari’s mysterious illness and the moments spent by her sickbed in helplessness and despair. He had finally managed to draw Emilia’s attention. She had pricked up her ears and was now following this account breathlessly. Close to the end of the story, he could have sworn that she had tears in her eyes and that the tips of her fingers were slowly trembling on the table, moistening the metallic surface. She got up from the table, making an excuse and mumbling something to her husband. After that, Sorin heard only the low-heeled sandals clicking on the floor tiles until the noise was gone.

  ‘Is something wrong? Where’s she going?’

  Matei waved his hand. ‘I apologise.’

  It had suddenly gotten dark, and in Emilia’s wake a milky, creamy way had opened, with the traces of her steps still shining upon it. Graceful shapes were floating in the air, dancing around him, befuddling him with their hot skin, leaving behind them tiny, coloured beads of sweat, falling like drops of rain off the leaves of the green trees. He wished he could jump straight into that thick river and abandon himself in its flow, up to the spring, over which he could see the embossed effigy of her sphinx-like face. She had cheekbones made of stone and thick eyebrows made of rust-coloured, autumnal grass. Her juicy mouth gaped from raspberry bushes, and her eyes sparkled faintly from two hollows that made you believe you could step to the other side on the moist realm of hope. He heard Matei continue.

  ‘Emilia believes that she is sick and stuffs herself with pills. Today it’s her heart, tomorrow it’s her swollen lymph nodes, or dizziness, or headaches – you name it. We have a doctor friend and I asked him to prescribe her some mild antidepressants, which give her these fits of somnolence.’

  Matilda’s face was mellow with compassion, but also aged and puffy from happiness and relief. Or that’s how Sorin saw her from the other side of the table that stretched now so far it had become the other part of the world.

  ‘I’d better go…’

  ‘Where?’ Matei asked, intrigued.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be better for someone to stay with her? To make sure she’s all right?’

  Matilda’s face refreshed itself in a couple of seconds. Surprise and malice had had a lifting effect upon her features. But Matei wasn’t blinking, as if the possibility of there existing a relationship between this old childhood friend and his wife – however feeble, however tiny and unimportant – was definitely out of the question. And this blindness, this absolute confidence, this unflinching ownership he discovered in small gestures and words, in the brutal revealing in his paternal tone of the hypochondria Emilia allegedly suffered from, slowly poisoned his mind. But Matilda raised her voice.

  ‘Sorin, please. This is unnecessary.’ And, in a lower voice, she added, ‘It’s not our business.’ Then she courteously turned to the serene husband and made him the most amazing proposal. ‘I would say, if you don’t mind…’

  ‘Of course I don’t mind!’

  ‘Sure – I meant, if you don’t mind and if Emilia is fine with that, I’d like to invite you to come to our place tomorrow. We’ve rented a little house from a local; it has two bedrooms and we also have a small garden. It’s very pleasant and cool in the evening. We can also have a barbecue if we like, can’t we?’

  He was hanging on her words and consenting dutifully, silently encouraging Matei, who seemed to hesitate in accepting the invitation.

  ‘Only if you would really like to…’ he added, trying to elicit an answer.

  Without this certainty, the following days would have been continuous madness and suffering.

  Matei got up slowly, a smile glued to his lips like a sticker. He was grinning politely at the happy family while rummaging in his pockets for change. After a few seconds that seemed like hours to Sorin, he drew out a couple of small bills, but his gesture brought about immediate protest.

  ‘No, no, please, the pleasure is mine. I really didn’t expect to meet Emilia here, after all these years. And I want you to give me now a firm promise that tomorrow evening, at seven, you will come to our place. Matilda, please, tell him how to get there. We have a deal!’

  Sorin put his hand out and shook Matei’s hand vigorously; not exaggeratedly, but firmly, as if they had just closed a deal. His gesture meant that, although they hadn’t put it down in black and white, they had a gentlemen’s agreement. Of course, Matei hadn’t managed to say anything in agreement, but even his silence could have been taken as an approval. Silence meant lack of resistance, a discreet consent, an abdication.

  He said goodbye as abruptly as Emilia had and moved away, saying to the girls, over his shoulder, that he was going to pay and that he would wait for them in the car. As he left behind the table full of leftovers from the feast, he felt invaded by a feeling of foolish bliss, en exaltation that disturbed his entrails.

  When he reached the car, his head already felt heavy. He leaned against the wall surrounding the parking lot and threw up with tears in his eyes. Someone had put all the images that made up reality in a huge mixing bowl, so that all its elements – all the particles, fractions, impulses and stimuli – had lost their destinations and were now wandering round the world in aimless pieces, just as he was wandering in search of his old partner. If he had had some time, he would have returned to Bucharest and searched for his old playmates, would have gathered them all together, all except Harry, and would have presented her with them as a gift, so she would see all that they had lost and then recovered by miracle.

  Under the soles of his feet ants were hysterically swarming, seeking refuge under a dying cockroach that was treading the air with its feet. Sometimes, feeling upon him the eyes of the stranger rising fatally above, it would stop for a couple of seconds, begging for mercy or hoping that maybe that way its agony would pass unnoticed. He grabbed it between his thumb and forefinger and lifted it off the ground. The insect waved its feelers another couple of times, then became as still as stone. He remained fascinated by the insect for several moments, noticing that it looked like an emissary of death, sitting with its mutinous horns and its long, thin, graceful legs supporting a shiny, smooth-backed, green-black body, radiating baroque shades of purple if he turned it to one side.

  ‘Fabricius,’ he said to himself, and the cockroach answered with a final spasm.

  ‘Is that its name?’

  The girls were standing behind him. Dori had been the one to ask the question, while Mari was looking at him with a face that had repulsion written all over it. ‘Yuck, that’s revolting!’

  ‘Would you like to hold it yourself?’ her father tempted her.

  Mari broke into a run, heading for the car, where Matilda was already waiting. He offered it to the other girl. Dori caught it between her plump fingers as if between two claws. Her face was beaming, illuminated by an unusual fascination. She was staring at the little cockroach that, after passing from one host to another, had come back to its senses and started to move chaotically. She watched it, marvelling at how fragile and frightening it was at the same time. Its frail legs probably sensed the end, for they were scratching the air. Matilda began calling her, out of patience and hungry.

  Sorin put a hand on Dori’s shoulder. ‘Come on, put it down. And make sure you don’t show it to your mum, or she won’t give us any food.’

  Dori revealed her small, white teeth and pinkish gums. She opened her small palm and slowly put the cockroach there on its back. There was a whole set of machinery behind the shiny shell: a tangle of tiny tubes winding like tendrils, carrying liquids. She reached with the tip of her index finger, preparing to inspect the inside of the factory, but then she stopped. She looked at her father with moist, loving eyes and a fleeting feeling of pride furrowed her face. For an instant, the father felt the same, but the moment flew quickly away. The girl, like a prestidigitator, caught the cockroach in between the two claws of the same hand with which she had laid it
to rest and crushed it, revealing two fingers down which an ochre-coloured, gluey liquid was trickling. Pride was still floating in the air between the petrified father and the triumphant daughter.

  ‘Are you coming?’

  She handed the cockroach to her father, gaping at him with her round eyes and enticing him to take the prey. Sorin drew back one step and the girl, seeing the disgust on his face, started to yell and laugh. She probably hadn’t expected her father to be such a coward, or maybe that’s what she had intended: to see his reaction, to test how brave he was and what he would have been able to do for them in exchange. She threw the crushed shell, from which the viscous, honey-like liquid seeped, to the ground and rushed to her mother, who was already seated in the car, with sunglasses perched on her nose in annoyed expectation. The day had acquired another dimension, the cockroach’s unjust death having placed a giant lens over the past and the future. He had a dull light in his eyes, as if what he saw there through that giant lens had brought about amazement but also childish misapprehension.

  They returned home in silence, and that was how they ended the day as well. Even the girls had become silent, while Dori, after secretly studying her father during dinner, finally seemed to have realised that the merciless elimination of the insect had ruined their friendship and temporarily estranged him from her. Only after Matilda washed the dishes and threw herself on the living room sofa did Sorin have the courage to ask her, in a voice vibrating with excitement: ‘I wonder, will they change their minds or really come tomorrow evening?’

  Matilda threw him a tired look, similar to that of his mother when she would come out of the kitchen and lie down on the bed in her room, rolling up the pillows under her head and dozing half upright as if on watch. ‘Why would they change their minds? They accepted, didn’t they?’

  ‘Thank you for that. I know that you did it for me.’

  ‘Oh, come on, I think it’s cute to meet your childhood girlfriend. And to learn more about you, no? Besides, they seem very nice people, very decent.’