Later that afternoon Ana went to the cafeteria behind the post office, bought some soup and sat at a table to leaf through her notes. The conclusion was plain. If all suicides had a cause, then that cause must be deducible. It was all a question of method and thoroughness, like being a good mathematician, all about observation and verifying assumptions, excluding probable but incorrect conclusions and arriving at the truth. The raw data she knew by heart: her father’s upbringing in a village in Oltenia, his years at the Institute, his thesis on topology, which came to nothing in the end, and his stockpot of burned letters and diaries. Now it was just about gathering more information, analyzing her data, and if she was rigorous enough she’d arrive at a connection, an order in the chaos of choices and decisions, omissions and imaginings, which altogether constituted a life.
That evening Ana began her investigation. As soon as her mother had gone to bed, she crept into the office and thumbed through her father’s books and the Russian dictionary, turning the pages in a hopeless search for handwritten comments in the margins. She hadn’t forgotten what the camp leader had said, and all weekend she rummaged through the files in the chest of drawers. She played archaeologist in her father’s life, eager to know why he went so early to the grave and wasted his talent. She soon discovered it was no easy task. Her father clearly hadn’t been one for documentation, and all she found was a file of correspondence on topology, a single photo album and a pile of unexceptionable postcards.
And the witnesses? Silenced, like in a mafia movie.
I don’t know, said her mother, when Ana asked about old pictures or letters. It was twenty years ago, for God’s sake, I don’t remember.
He was born under an unlucky star, was her grandma’s explanation for the suicide, but Ana didn’t give up. She asked: But why did he stop playing chess, why did he burn his diaries?
Yeah, and why did the sun rise this morning? said her mother. How should I know?
Since she wasn’t getting answers to her questions, she began coming up with hypotheses with which to pester her family. He might have been sick with cancer or Parkinson’s, suicide perhaps his final dignified act, saving the family from a humiliating decline. Or he’d got on the wrong side of the Ceaușescu regime, smuggling dissidents over the border, maybe he was a spy, she jabbered, until her mother slapped the newspaper down on the table.
Put down that folder and do your French homework. You’ve got an exam to think about.
When Ana had read all her father’s books without result, she tried to access the old things of his that were stored in the basement, but the key was gone, the janitor took ages cutting a new one, and for the Whitsun weekend Ana’s aunts came to visit from the countryside. After they’d eaten, Ana stood lurking in the corridor, and when her aunts walked by she drew them aside and asked why her father had taken his life.
He was too fragile for the big city, said one.
God always takes the best of us first, said the second.
It was his head, it was too big, said the third. He choked on all those clever, clever thoughts.
Ana kept going, working like a scientist. She read her father’s letters. She interviewed the neighbors and the local chess players. But did she find cryptic messages in his notes? Did she see patterns in the topological figures he’d left behind? Did she hear rumors of a mysterious past, a secret lover, or at least a secret câine communitar, a communal stray he couldn’t stop feeding?
Poor Ana. Her father had lived a Teflon life. All she could dig up was guesswork, shots in the dark, and that wasn’t how a mathematician worked. Hypotheses bristled in all directions, and by the end of May she was forced to sideline the investigation and concentrate on her exams. When June came she ran rings around all opposition, even correcting her teacher during the physics oral, and at midsummer she climbed the podium three times to shake the headmaster’s hand. First for her high-school certificate, second for the mathematics prize, and third for being top of the class. This was Ana’s moment of glory: On stage before her oppressors, volleys of applause raining down, she smiled a rare smile. She’d worked hard, and in a flash of euphoria she raised a clenched fist into the air, a nerd power salute, or, who knows, perhaps a gesture to her father.
The Institute’s response didn’t arrive until July, and it came as a surprise to no one that she got in. The rest of the summer dragged along at an excruciatingly slow pace. Every day Ana knocked on the janitor’s door, until finally he got his act together and cut a new key to the basement. Ana spent the final weeks of her vacation rummaging through boxes in the damp storeroom—her father’s coat and shoes, his pants and suits—but all she found in the pockets was the silent residue of life, his forty-two years on this earth boiled down to toothpicks and a few coins, flakes of tobacco, crumpled receipts, and a snapped cigarette.
As the beginning of the semester approached, Ana bought a new calculator, cleared a shelf in the office for her compendiums, and at the chess club she played a farewell game with Bogdan. He’d got into Brunel, but only had money for the first semester, he explained. Still, it’d all be fine.
Next summer I’ll come home, he said. Then I’ll take you back with me to London.
The day before the semester started, Ana’s grandma gave her a little icon, a saint, who was supposed to protect her from the devilry of mathematics, and for once her mother didn’t grumble about her superstition.
If you’ve inherited your father’s luck, she sighed, you’ll probably need it.
And then suddenly Ana was there, for only the second time in her life: at the Institute, where her parents had met, walking the halls where her father lived as a young man. The first months were a rush of enthusiasm, weeks of conversations rich in mathematical jargon, a feast for statisticians, computer scientists, and youthful talents like herself. If she was ever going to make friends, thought Ana, it would be here.
And Ana did eat lunch with the student assistants in the canteen. She joined a topology study group, drank wine, and surfed obscure internet forums with her new classmate Claudia. She went along to a few parties, and one morning she even said hi to a tall, angular guy on the tram, who fixed her with his almost lashless eyes and smiled at her twenty-two stops in a row. Compared to her dead-dull life in high school, Ana’s first semester at the Institute was a ball. She did well academically too, flinging herself into assignments and prizewinning projects, and it wasn’t more than a month or two before she was the geometry teacher’s go-to girl.
Guess we’d better activate Ana, he said, when the other students refused to answer. Ana’ll break the strike, yes, that’s what I call a scab.
Ana was her father’s daughter, she took the Institute by storm, and after a few months she was interviewed for an intern position with an algebraic research group, but lost out to a fourth-year. She had all sorts of good and less-good reasons to enjoy the carefree life of a student, but after the initial weeks of euphoria it felt like a shadow had stolen into the Institute. She couldn’t put her finger on what it was, this sensation. A kind of eczema, almost, a small but insistent itch that crawled up her left-hand side as she walked through certain parts of the Institute: the lecture hall, the canteen, the east-facing stairs. Ana never said it to her classmates, nor did she tell her mother, and it took a lot of prompting before she’d admit it to me, because of course she didn’t believe in nonsense like that. It was a delusion, pure and simple. Not him, not a haunting, nothing but a young woman’s imagination, a dream or nightmare, no more than an illusion, when she sat in the lecture hall and saw her father’s shadow slip across the floor, when she caught his scent in the corner of the coffee room, or heard the echo of his shambling gait receding down the halls.
In December, after her first exam was over, Ana’s maternal aunt, Carmen, arrived from Budapest. She often did at Christmas, but this time she came early. She came to die. Her pancreas, that was the trouble. The doctors had given her six months, and Carmen was divorced and had no children, so Ana had to sur
render her room to her aunt and move into the office. At first she didn’t think it would be that bad. Ana’d never had much of a relationship with her flaky aunt, but once Carmen was installed in the apartment she filled up all the rooms, and no matter where Ana went she could hear her intolerable Jacques Brel songs, could see her clothes and jewelry flung across chairs and tables. Soon the metallic odor of sickness began to cling to the furniture, bottles of medicine filled first one then two of the shelves in the fridge, and Ana was often kept up late at night by Carmen moaning through the walls.
One Sunday afternoon, Ana noticed Carmen reading The Tibetan Book of the Dead, and when Carmen saw Ana scowling over her shoulder she put the book down.
What’s wrong with you? said Carmen. You think I’m pathetic, do you?
Oh, no, said Ana, blushing. Not at all.
Carmen said she’d gotten the book from her ex-husband, a Hungarian mathematician she’d met through Ana’s father. Her father was no slouch when it came to sums, but he sure as hell wasn’t much of a matchmaker. The first six months of marriage had been great, but then the Hungarian had lost interest, and suddenly he couldn’t get it up. He’d rather read the paper or have a bite to eat.
A fag, that’s what he was, said Carmen. Do you have any idea how much dick I got that year?
Ana shook her head, appalled, clinging to the armrest.
This much, she said, showing with her thumb and forefinger.
It wasn’t long before a ritual developed, and aunt and niece spent afternoons together. Ana and Carmen at her sickbed, Ana and Carmen in the kitchen and the bathroom: Carmen in the tub and Ana on the mat beside it. They used to chat for an hour or two every afternoon, discussing the rice-water cure Carmen was currently taking or the time Carmen was Queen of the Night in Mamaia. See these tits, she said, hauling the sorry remnants out of her bra. Once was I could get a king’s ransom for these, and now look at them, like two dried peppers.
For the most part it was Carmen who did the talking and Ana who listened, but every now and then Ana screwed up her courage and told her about the erotic stories her classmate Claudia printed out from the web, or about the male students’ ham-handed advances at the Institute. It was also around this time that Ana saw the tall guy with the bald eyes from the tram again. One day around Christmas she noticed him at Laptarie, drinking a beer. He was with a girl from the Ploiestis Chess Club, and it was she who introduced them. His name was Daniel, and Ana was invited to sit at their table. She exchanged a few words with him, if you could call it that—it was hard to hear above the music.
The next afternoon she told Carmen about the encounter.
Did he look you in the eye? inquired her aunt anxiously.
Ana shrugged. She couldn’t remember.
Next time we’ll have to doll you up a little. Carmen touched Ana’s chin, turning her head gently toward the lamp. Cover up those craters.
Ana spent New Year’s Eve studying for exams. She sat in the office and flicked through the geometry compendium and her father’s mathematical dictionary, and when the first rockets exploded above the apartment block she realized it had been nearly a year since her walk through the cemetery with Bogdan. What had she learned about her dad since then? That he was a pessimist, that he was too fragile or too clever. But she was no closer to an explanation. For a moment she ran her finger over the equations, the geometry problem. Then she slammed the book shut and went to see Carmen.
Her aunt lay dozing to the radio, but she smiled when Ana came in.
Happy New Year, said Ana.
Shitty New Year, muttered Carmen.
Ana took her hand.
At least it’ll be a short one for me, said Carmen.
You mustn’t say that, said Ana, squeezing her hand. On the radio the host was counting down to midnight, outside the skies flashed yellow and red and blue, and for a while they sat in silence, staring at the colors, until Ana wiped her eyes.
Carmen, she sniffed, how well did you know my father?
Your father? Pretty well, I’d say. But mostly when we were young.
What was he like in those days? Was he a pessimist?
A pessimist? Nah, not at all, he was curious, full of enthusiasm. There was nothing that could stop your father.
Carmen handed her a napkin, and Ana blew her nose.
But, Carmen, why do you think he did it, then? If he was happy and full of courage?
Yes, why did he do it? she said, sighing. I don’t know. But your mother always says it was the Institute that killed him. Too many theorems, you know. Far too many numbers. Frankly, it wouldn’t surprise me. Turns you a bit cracked, that muck.
It was the only lead Ana had to go on. Three days later, when the Institute opened, she was shifting foot to foot in front of the counter at the library before the bleary-eyed librarian had even turned up. Before he had a chance to put down his coffee cup, Ana was in full flow, explaining she was looking for information on her father, that he’d worked at the Institute in the seventies, and that she wanted to see all the files the Institute had on Ciprian Ivan.
Ivan, you say, muttered the librarian. Doesn’t ring a bell. But if you’re sure he worked here, they must have a file on him at the archive.
Ten minutes later Ana was crossing the street, walking the few hundred yards down the road to the main library, where a guard followed her down to the basement and opened a door. The archive shivered in the light of a lamp or a single fluorescent tube. It smelled sharply of mothballs, I think she said, presumably with yellowing posters on the walls, and behind a desk sat a pinched and scrawny man, his head resting in his hand. With his other hand he flicked through a newspaper, and when Ana said she needed the file on Ciprian Ivan, he nodded without looking up from the pages.
Permission from the Romanian Academy, he said.
Um, well, I’m studying at the Institute for Mathematics, said Ana. Here’s my library card.
And your permission slip from the Academy. Where’s that?
I don’t have one.
Are you sure? Try checking one more time.
Ana sighed, slipping a bill out of her wallet.
Ah, yes, he said. That’s the one. Come on, we’ll find this Ciprian together.
Ana followed him down the corridor, farther in among the shelves, until the archivist found a cardboard box, and in the cardboard box he found a ring binder, and from the ring binder he took a thin folder.
You know, you’re not really allowed to be here, he said, and glanced at his watch. Hey, look at that, it’s nearly lunchtime. If I just nip to the canteen, you’ll definitely be gone by the time I get back.
Ciprian Ivan’s records were brief. It took her no more than ten minutes to read through them. The first document registered his enrollment as a student. There followed a series of grade books, and then a letter with the names of new instructors for the spring semester of 1974. Her father’s name was at the top of the list, and farther down she recognized another name: Paul Pintea, his old mathematician friend. The next document was a copy of his employment contract as a research assistant, dated January 1975, and the final document in the folder was an index of employees’ addresses and telephone numbers. Under the heading “Research Assistants,” she found her dad’s information, and on the next line down she noticed the name Paul Pintea again. That was all. Ana rifled through the bits of paper, but there was no diploma or dissertation, not even a letter of dismissal. Like the record of a hologram, she thought as she turned the pages, until she couldn’t stand it anymore and put the folder back, hurrying down the corridor and climbing into the winter’s cold.
The rest of the day she tried to track down Paul Pintea. She remembered him from when she was little, a straight-backed man with a thunderous laugh, and as she skimmed through the phone books at the library her mind strayed back to the meal at the restaurant nine years earlier. Paul and her father had fought that evening, she remembered, but what it was about she hadn’t a clue. Ana racked her brain for a few h
ours and tried vainly to reach her mother on the phone, but as she walked past a poster for the Transylvanian Conference for Mathematical Didactics in the canteen it suddenly popped into her head: the university at Cluj. She remembered the city from her father’s monologues, the city he’d sent his dissertation to, a city full of mathematicians and scientists, but when she looked up Paul Pintea in the Cluj-Napoca phone book she found nothing. The internet offered no answers either, but when she called Babeș-Bolyai University the registrar confirmed that they did indeed employ a professor of mathematics by that name. Then she went into the reading room and tapped Claudia on the shoulder.
Up for a trip to Cluj? whispered Ana.
Cluj, said Claudia. What on earth would we do there?
They didn’t have the money for train tickets or a hostel, but Ana made up a story about a study trip, a sister class they were visiting at Babeș-Bolyai, and at the library she printed off two fake invitations on official Institute letterhead. At their respective ends of Bucharest they showed the letters to their mothers. Out came the wallets, and two weeks later, Ana was entering the railway station to meet Claudia.
In her bag she had Paul Pintea’s phone number and an old photograph of him with her father. She hadn’t called yet, because she wanted to look him in the eye when he told his version of the story. Why this detail was so important she couldn’t explain, but she wanted to surprise Paul and ask why her father had taken his life; something told her he held the key to the suicide, and she wanted to cry or fall to her knees and beseech him to tell the truth. Rehearsing her little plan as she walked across the railway station tiles, at the kiosk she nearly bumped into Daniel, the angular man, his eyes so lashless they seemed naked. It made her jump, but Daniel was with a beautiful girl, so Ana simply nodded. Then she hurried onward to the platform, where she found Claudia. They climbed aboard, and from the compartment she saw Daniel getting on the same train, alone.
The Invention of Ana Page 8