Find anything interesting? asked Ana behind me, and I flew up out of the chair, not having heard her approach.
Yes, yeah, I said, gesturing with the folder. Sorry. Your artworks, they’re nice.
Nice? God, I hope not. I mean, I’d rather they were a little ugly, or nasty. A little viciousness about them, you know, a little rage.
Ana paused, struggling with her hoodie. Casting about for something else to say, I put the folder back and picked up a framed picture from the desk, a photo of a young man standing at the prow of a sailboat.
Who’s this guy? I asked her.
Ana’s head popped out of the sweater.
Oh, that’s my ex-fiancé, she said. Come on, let’s go up on the roof.
I put the frame back on the table, Ana grabbed mugs and a bottle of whiskey, and we followed the stairs up to the roof as she explained how she met her ex-fiancé in Bergen. She’d just moved to Norway and had no friends—or maybe she did, but not very good ones—and that was when she first met Isak and they fell in love, or thought they fell in love, and moved in together on his boat at Sjøflyhavnen. It was early 2006 or late 2005, Ana couldn’t recall, but it was cold, and it rained all the time. They started making art together, the happiest months of Ana’s life, but one day she told Isak about the time she’d lived in Morocco, and after that everything withered.
See? said Ana. That’s why I’m done with men.
Morocco? I asked. What happened in Morocco?
Trust me, she said. You don’t want to know.
Ana filled the mugs, and for a while we sat and stared out over Bushwick, which lay flat and pallid beneath us, all bedbugs and great expectations. As we sat there, I couldn’t help but wonder about the machine-translated story. How long had Ana had that lying in her folder? Maybe it wasn’t so strange that she’d been curious and tried to read it, but the pages were at the very bottom of the stack, dog-eared, the staples torn out, and something told me it was printed several weeks ago. The thought made me uncomfortable, and I stared at Ana, as if I could force an answer from her with my glare, but she didn’t notice it, or didn’t care, or pretended she didn’t.
Hey, Ana, I said. Remember the short story you read. The one with the appendix?
Mm, she said. What about it?
Well, I was just thinking, how many of my stories have you read? Just the one?
Yeah, the one about the appendix.
Nothing apart from that?
No, just the one. But it was good.
Thanks, that’s kind of you.
It’s not kind, it’s true. You can ask Monica yourself when you see her.
Ana sat up straighter and topped off the mugs, and we clinked them together and were silent for a while. Beneath us the city quieted, garage doors slamming, the roar of the trucks slowly dying down. I looked at the towers across the river, shining on the horizon like a mirage, and out of the corner of my eye I could see Ana huddled beneath her hoodie, swilling the whiskey around in her mug, and I bit my lip and tried to read her pale face.
Ana, I said. There’s something I’ve been wondering. Why are you doing all this for me? Taking me to this birthday thing, introducing me to editors and everything. You barely know me.
She looked at me. For a moment her gaze was distant, as though she’d forgotten who I was and why she was sitting there, but then her eyes lit up, and she smiled.
Because you’re sweet, she said. So sweet and young and naïve it almost makes me sad.
Sad?
Yes, sad. Sad because I’ve never been as young as you. Not even when I was a little girl.
I laughed, but Ana said she was serious.
I was born old, she said, and then she explained that her childhood had somehow slipped between the stitches of her memory, and she told me about the years after her father’s suicide, the hundreds of weeks compacted almost into nothing, just a flash or two left behind, vague images and moods, scents, hardly anything tangible. She’d played a lot of chess in those days, but the games she’d played were long forgotten. She liked drawing, but she’d thrown out all her sketchpads. For eight years she’d lived like a sleepwalker, looking without seeing, hearing without listening, forgetting everything, and she’d probably be living that way now, said Ana, if Bogdan Marco hadn’t woken her with a question.
She met him at the chess club. Bogdan was eighteen, she said, newly arrived in Drumul Taberei from the southern suburbs of Bucharest, a boy with an easy laugh and downy upper lip, and the first male Ana had met for several years. He was clumsy and plump and not all that cute, but Ana was in her third year at the Central High School for Girls, and Y chromosomes were thin on the ground. How her mother had finagled her into Bucharest’s finest secondary school Ana never fully understood, but it felt so alien to her it might have been another planet. Everything she knew from Drumul Taberei, the wide concrete planes and horizontal windows, the straight lines and green, open spaces, everything sensible and planned, was ousted by a world ornamented and closed, by columns in the little garden, cramped nooks with busts and paintings and rows of ancient plane trees, which shielded the school from uninvited eyes. It was an old world full of codes and references unfamiliar to Ana, and every morning she traveled the long route from Drumul Taberei to the city center, dozing on the bus, while her classmates slept in their villas and mansions and luxury apartments, and when Ana finally made it to the Promised School she found a tight-knit clique of girls who’d known each other since they were little. They called her the Bus Princess, they called her the Queen of Drumul Taberei, and although she never had any friends, she did get used to a life of girls and women, of female teachers and lunch ladies, and forgot that she’d once ordered the boys around in the parking lot, forgot, almost, that whole swathes of the population had testicles at all. Her mother’s father had died ages ago, her father’s father she’d never met, and now that her own father was pushing up daisies and their portrait of the Nation’s Father had been archived straight down the garbage chute, Ana forgot hair could grow on a human back, forgot the prickly feel of stubble against cheeks. She forgot what having friends felt like, and when Bogdan Marco entered her life and asked his question, it was like waking up from a long and quiet dream, a blind woman’s dream of a peaceful, empty cubicle.
The first time she saw him at the chess club, he was sitting with his nose in a sci-fi novel while the teacher illustrated a pawn storm. The fourth or fifth time he showed up to class, Ana noticed he was reading Flatland, and he noticed her noticing, and Ana drew a pentagon she slipped across the table.
Are you into sci-fi? he asked, as they were packing their bags together. I’ve got some awesome ones at home.
That evening he took her to a burger joint at the new shopping center, and afterward they went back to his house to swap books. Ana tried to suss him out the whole way there, Bogdan, three parts nerd and one part ghetto, and even before she entered his room she’d guessed he had a shoe box of rolling papers and a lump of hash underneath his bed. They shared a joint while sitting on the windowsill, and over the following weeks they watched science-fiction movies together, and when they had money in their pockets they snuck into one of the new bars on Lipscani and made up stories about the students on the dance floor. By Christmas they were best friends, and every evening they talked on the phone until Ana’s mother tore the line out of the socket.
Do you think we’re made of money? she’d say. Get off your backside and walk over there.
It wasn’t just chess and sci-fi they had in common. Bogdan was an ambitious young man, and while the other girls lost their virginity in toilets and tanning booths on Lipscani, Ana sat in the library and did homework with Bogdan. While their classmates were slogging away at sines and cosines, Ana and Bogdan were already busy with vector calculus and binomial simulations, and they felt nothing but contempt for the idiots who got stuck in physics class, mixing up beta minus and gamma decay. As they sat in Ana’s room after chess lessons, Bogdan told her about his mother and
stepfather, who ignored him like the lint behind the sofa, but it didn’t matter, because soon he’d be going to Imperial College, he’d wave goodbye to Bucharest and never look back. In return Ana told him about her father, Ciprian Ivan, chess champion and mathematician, and how she wanted to apply to the Institute for Mathematics and publish all the articles he never got to write.
Can’t you stop all that number witching? said Ana’s grandma when she saw Ana and Bogdan bent over an equation.
Doesn’t the boy get food at home? said Ana’s mother, when Bogdan had once again picked the fridge clean.
On the eighth anniversary of her father’s death, Ana invited him to Ghencea Cemetery. Every year she paid her father tribute with a little ritual, lighting candles and reading aloud from Euclid and asking God to look after him. Now it was January again, and for the first time she was going to share the day with someone else. They met outside the chess club on the cold, dank day, and Ana wore a dress and tights for the occasion. She’d put on eyeliner, and Bogdan laughed when he saw her.
What’s going on, he said, you headed for a street corner?
Ghencea was deserted that day. They walked its empty paths, their boots sinking into the gravel and squelching through the mud between statues and monuments, until Ana pointed out the grave. Getting down on her haunches, she cleared the leaves and dirt, then lit a candle and read aloud, and Bogdan sang a psalm his mother had taught him. Finally, Ana placed a letter by the headstone, and for several minutes they stood in silence, watching the grave, while dusk crept up on them.
How did it happen, again? asked Bogdan with a sniff. Why’d he hang himself?
It was an obvious question, but Ana had never thought of it before. Her father had hanged himself, that was a fact chiseled into time, a certitude, like the French Revolution or the twenty-four hours in a day, and she’d never considered there might be a reason. Her mother’d often said it was just something that happened, it wasn’t anything her father could help, and Ana had made do with that explanation, but now the words had abruptly wriggled free, atomized between Bogdan’s lips.
I don’t know, said Ana. It’s not like I can ask him.
Bogdan stuck his hands in his pockets.
No, he said. But I was thinking more about what he wrote. Didn’t he say anything in the letter?
What letter?
You know, the note.
There wasn’t anything like that.
Nah, come on. A note, said Bogdan, and he told her about the hundreds of suicides he’d seen in TV series and movies, razor blades and train tracks and hunting rifles, the method varied, but there was always a letter or a note or a secret message. Maybe it was sitting in a safe-deposit box or written in invisible ink, or once he’d read a novel where a man had carved it into his own chest before swallowing a cyanide ampoule.
Bogdan, said Ana, I think I’d like to go home.
Okay, let’s move, he said, giving himself a shake. They walked through the gate, Bogdan jumped onto the bus, and Ana followed the yellow light along the main road, passed by bus after bus, as a fine mizzle fell across the streets, and she thought about what Bogdan had said. Why had he done it? Why had her father left her, and if there was always a note, then why had she never read it? When she finally got home, her grandma was sitting in front of the television and her mother was in the kitchen, doing the dishes.
What have I told you about going to the cemetery? snarled her mother. Next time you’ll be grounded.
And her grandma, proudly: You’ve always been so fond of church.
Ana took off her shoes and hung up her jacket on the peg, put the water on to boil and settled at the little kitchen table. Steam rose from the sink, and with a practiced motion her mother washed a pot clean, then lifted a frying pan out of the basin.
Mom, said Ana, did Dad write a note?
For a moment her mother froze. Then she lowered the pan and turned around.
Why do you ask?
No reason. I just want to know.
For a second she gazed at Ana. Then she nodded, turned back to the sink and picked up the pan again.
Your father wasn’t well, sweetheart. And he burned his letters in a stockpot.
That was all her mother would say on the matter, but Ana couldn’t forget Bogdan’s question. Suddenly she couldn’t concentrate in class, she lost her appetite, and she lay sleepless through the night, staring at the bony branches of the plane tree. To cheer her up, her grandma gave her little tokens, even slipping her a silver cross. She tried resolutely to get Ana to come to her Bible group, but to her grandma’s chagrin Ana was interested only in the more morbid aspects of the Orthodox Church’s liturgy, the burial and mourning, the stuff about eating Jesus’s flesh and blood.
At Easter she went to chess camp without Bogdan. Ana pestered him to come too, but Bogdan wouldn’t be swayed: He was saving up to study in London. She arrived at camp with her father’s chess pieces and two books about chess theory, and every day she played until the squares began to swim before her eyes. Afterward she stood in front of the trophy case and admired the cups inscribed with her father’s name: Ciprian Ivan, the Talent from Târgu Jiu, four-time champion at the Drumul Taberei chess club. She wanted to be at least as good as him, she wanted to be the Romanian Judit Polgár, and while the other kids went down to the lake to fish, Ana remained at the cabin, solving chess problems. In the evening, when she couldn’t move another piece, she sat in the common room and listened to the older chess players tell stories of long-lost endgames. A few evenings before they were due to go home, the camp leader said to Ana: Your father could have been the greatest chess player in Romania.
Could he? But then why did he stop?
The camp leader sighed, scratching at his beard. Yeah, that’s a good question. He left Bucharest for a few years. But I’m not really sure. He wasn’t quite the same when he came home.
Ana solved a whole book of chess problems that Easter, and filled two notepads with diary entries. She wrote a lot about her father, questions and guesses, ideas as to why he’d never become the great chess player he’d seemed destined to be. She promised herself she’d ask her mother about it, and when it finally came time to pack her things and head home, she was almost glad. But only almost. On the way to Bucharest she sat with her forehead against the train window, gazing out at the slippery fields, the rainy weather, and when they reached the gray suburbs the camp leader sighed and laid a hand on her shoulder.
I know, I know, he said. If you’ve got no other pleasures in life, at least you’ve got the pleasure of coming home and kicking off your shoes.
Back home, she applied for entry to the Institute for Mathematics at the Romanian Academy, sweating for days over the admissions essay. The night before she was due to send it off, she couldn’t sleep. She listened to the water streaming through the pipes from the cisterns, stared at the outlines of the treetops, and thought about her father’s application to the Institute, the one he’d written when he was young. She’d seen it once, worn and discolored in a scrapbook, and there might be a sentence or two she could borrow. Not wanting to wake anyone, she didn’t bother switching on the light, and when she stood in the corridor she paused for a moment. The door to his office was open, and from the corridor she could see the window, the curtains taken down, the moon shining in. It was eight years ago and the curtain hook was gone, the holes from the screws filled in and painted over, the panes and molding around the window replaced, the floors newly varnished. She stepped into the office and the books were still standing; it was still the same desk. But the smell was different, the spots of candlewax gone, the marks on the wall thoroughly scrubbed away, and not the least vestige of her father remained. The thought was so brutal she had to sit down. Time had erased him, the years had come between them and removed the last physical traces, and soon it would dim her memories too, and she would never feel him again. She pressed her hands to her mouth, as crying rolled through her chest and spit slid through her fingers.
Ana, said a voice behind her. Are you crying?
It was her mother, and she laid her arms around her and spoke in a calming voice. There, sweetheart, she said. Calm down, there’s nothing to cry about. Leading her into the room, she gave her a blanket and a cup of tea, and they sat together while Ana shook with sobs.
I’ve lost him, said Ana. He’s vanished completely, I can’t even remember how he smelled.
That’s not true, her mother said. He’s still with us somewhere.
No, said Ana. He’s just gone, there’s nothing left of him. It’s been eight years. I’ve lived almost as long without him as with him, and all those years, it’s like—they’re thinning him, they’re watering him down.
Her mother said nothing. She held Ana and stroked her hair, and slowly Ana calmed down and crumpled in her mother’s lap, her face red and puffy.
Mom, she sniveled. Why did he do it?
Sweetheart, your dad, her mother said. And she took a pause, a pause that opened like a trash chute, a trash chute full of Styrofoam and tinfoil, cat litter and plastic bags, and the pause was everything Ana needed to hear. She straightened up and dried her eyes, staring at her mother.
Why did he do it, Mom?
Your dad, he. Well, he was a bit of a pessimist.
A pessimist?
Yes, he was. You know what? I think it’s time the two of us went back to bed and got a proper night’s sleep.
The next morning Ana went to the library. She ought to be in school, but the missing note rattled around inside her like a fact, or not like a fact, because it was a fact, and when the librarian opened the doors Ana was the first one to rush in among the shelves. She borrowed books about famous suicides, notes from desperate poets and politicians, and the rest of the day she sat in the reading room and flicked through the volumes. Bogdan was right. There was always a note, and if there wasn’t a note, there was at least an obvious explanation. A suicide was no different from the rest of the universe. Nothing happened spontaneously: Everything in this world consisted of cause and effect, an apple tree won’t produce a quince or a pear, and people don’t emerge from the sea.
The Invention of Ana Page 7