Call Me Brooklyn

by Lago, Eduardo

  Once inside, though, you had to abide by Frank’s unwritten laws. He ran the Oakland according to a scrupulously enforced code of conduct. You could see why they put up with it, though. Frank’s beneficence didn’t end with people’s material needs. Many of the regulars at the Oakland were, to use Gal Ackerman’s expression, people who had been defeated by life, individuals who had lost their way. Here, they felt safe. The Oakland gathered them in one by one: Manuel el Cubano, Niels Claussen, even Gal. It almost happened to me too, but I was able to get away in time. Not Gal. He was so tired of wandering around that, when he chanced into the Oakland one day, he was trapped at once: a lifer. He didn’t notice it himself, at first. It was a creeping sort of paralysis. At first, of course, he could leave at will, travel far away, get on with his life—and it didn’t seem odd to him that he always came back to the Oakland whenever inertia finally caught up with him. By the time I came into his story, the fight had almost completely gone out of him. Those sudden disappearances of his were the last thrashings of a fish on a hook. It was as though, on that distant afternoon when he had first arrived at the Oakland, someone had drawn an invisible circle around him. A very wide, loose circle in those days, but with the passing of the years it tightened around him until he could hardly take a step.

  His name was Bruno Gouvy and he was a diplomat. She met him in Paris in September of 1985, at an art exhibit sponsored by the Belgian embassy where Bruno was a First Secretary. She had a scholarship to study with Bédier in the conservatory. A very brief courtship. They married in December in a more or less secret civil ceremony. I was born in late 1987. When I was sixteen or seventeen years old, Nadia confessed to me that she had never fallen in love like that before. She meant that she’d never been in a relationship so peaceful as that one. Her love life had always been quite turbulent.

  It unnerved me to hear my mother talking about such intimate things so candidly. Listening to her tell me about all the other men she’d been involved with made me horribly anxious. My parents were the pillars that sustained my world. I looked at her both fascinated and frightened, trying to imagine what her previous life had been like. What I’d thought was solid ground was in fact an abyss. I didn’t want this new version of my mother. I wanted the one I’d always known. I knew my mother adored Bruno—that had always been the case, and it would never change. She felt safe with him—he made her calm. By his side, she discovered that being in love was compatible with feeling at peace. Before meeting Bruno she never suspected that such a thing was possible.

  Years later, when she was very ill, she told me that she had only been capable of giving birth because of the stability that my father had given her. Before she met him, she’d been pregnant many times, but around the fourth month, each time, she would inevitably miscarry. The terrible thing was that there was no physiological cause for it. She was convinced that it was her fault—that there was a will toward self-destruction inside her that made new life anathema to her body. That’s what she told herself, anyway. The last time it had happened to her, the doctor was unequivocal: no more. Even one more miscarriage was too risky. She would have to resign herself to being childless. That was before she met my father, while she still lived in the United States. A few months after they were married, she got it into her head that with Bruno she would be able to overcome her jinx. She told me she’d never been so sure about anything before. So she waited to become pregnant, which didn’t take long—she didn’t have any trouble with conception, the problem always came afterward. She found a good gynecologist. She filled him in on her history and warned him that she was intent on bringing this pregnancy to term. After examining her, the doctor told her that her miscarriages had done a lot of damage, although from a physiological point of view, she was still capable of bearing children. He gave no credence to her theory that it was she who had provoked her own miscarriages, and suggested that perhaps she should see a psychologist. My mother replied that this was no longer necessary, that things had changed. The gynecologist finally assented, assuring her that he would do whatever he could. Nadia waited until the middle of the third month before she announced to Bruno she was pregnant. He’d suspected that something was up, but now that he knew for certain, he told her that he shared her certainty that everything would turn out fine. The pregnancy reached the fourth month, then the fifth. She had never gotten that far. Recalling this, she later told me that her body sent her little messages at night—little reassurances that everything was going according to plan. The sixth, seventh, and eighth months came. In due time, she went into labor and gave birth without any complications whatever.

  I know I’m breaking the rules here—generally, you don’t tell these stories because nothing happens in them. But the unbelievable thing about my mother’s pregnancy was precisely the lack of anything notable. The extraordinary thing about it was that there was nothing out of the ordinary. And that was also the story of Nadia’s life after I was born: a remarkable absence of anything remarkable. As she herself told me, motherhood changed her character, although in my opinion the change had begun earlier—when she met Bruno. All in all, it was a change for the good, although there were certain things that were lost in the process. Various edges of her personality were smoothed over, and she lost that rage that had always been a part of her and that was inseparable from her creativity.

  It was a complicated phenomenon that I didn’t fully understand until much later, when I no longer had her around to talk with. What happened to her was most evident in her relationship with music. Music continued to be the center of her life, of course—as it had always been since she was a child. She’d gone to Paris in the first place because of her musical talent. Her studies with Bédier were the culmination of many years of effort. But there was a difference, now. She had no ambition. Love, yes—she would never stop loving music. But the ambition that till then had been the engine of everything she did had disappeared. Nadia Orlov, the prodigy of whom her professors expected so much, lost interest in competing, struggling, excelling. Being better than others ceased to be a motivation for her. She continued to live up to the rigid standards that Bédier imposed on her until her scholarship ended, but in her heart she had abandoned the idea of becoming a concert violinist. Her involvement with music was, from then on, purely spiritual, shall we say. Internal. The world and its pomps and vanities had nothing to do with it.

  In that, she was exactly like my father. You could say his profession was in his blood. Bruno Gouvy was the son and grandson of diplomats. But, in his blood or not, it wasn’t his calling. It’s not that he didn’t like what he did, but the truth was that he had mainly resigned himself to follow in the family tradition because he saw it as a way to keep himself concealed. For him, being a diplomat was the perfect cover—elegance, good manners, and unfailing discretion are barriers behind which almost anything could be hidden. Diplomacy allowed Bruno to keep his true self hidden, protected. And it was only when he found himself far from all protocol, behind closed doors, in private, that he allowed himself the luxury of being who he really was—which is to say, something of an aesthete. There was something sacred about all this, for him. Few things, if any, were more important to him than privacy. I realized all of this little by little, but now that the time has come for me to go out into the world and deal with all its traps and snares on my own, it all seems quite clear.

  As for me, I was coddled to ridiculous extremes. I might as well have been raised in a sterilized capsule, completely outside of the reality surrounding it. It was the three of us, and that’s all. All my parents needed was their daughter and each other; beyond that, perhaps, a very limited circle of friends. And inside that fortress (and this point is crucial if you want to understand what their marriage was like), the only thing that had any value was art. They lived in an artificial world whose only religion was beauty. Papa brought his passion for painting into their partnership, Mama hers for music. Between those two planets swarmed the various constellations of the
other arts. But if it didn’t have anything to do with beauty, it didn’t even register.

  Of course, if I had wanted to tell an exciting story, Nadia’s before her marriage more than fits the bill. She was born, grew up, and went to school in Laryat, Siberia, in a makeshift town whose residents were all scientists. If she wound up an adherent of the religion of beauty, she began in a world where rationality and knowledge were seen as the center of life. The school in that non-town was run by educators whose pedagogical philosophy necessitated giving their children an encyclopedic education: music, languages, physics, mathematics, astronomy, history, literature (broadly speaking, I mean), philosophy, and the social sciences. Nadia left when she was still quite young. Early on, in the States, it became evident that she had an extraordinary talent for the violin. Before she was twelve, she was accepted to the Boston Conservatory. The admissions committee was astonished when they heard her play during her audition—and bear in mind that these were people for whom child prodigies were as common as rocks. Years later, when she auditioned for Juilliard after graduating from Smith College, they gave her a similar reception. She easily surpassed the expectations of her professors throughout her career. When she graduated, she was awarded not only her degree but—as you know—a scholarship to study in Paris. I’m reiterating all this, Chapman, because the end of the story links up with the beginning. The idea, as far as she was concerned, was to construct the perfect conditions for her becoming a concert violinist, but after she met Bruno, and I was born, all that got put aside. A new leaf. Now that I can look at it with some perspective, it all strikes me as somewhat sinister. Nadia Gouvy, formerly Rossof, although I know nothing of that period of her life . . . disappeared, making way for a very different person: Nadia Gouvy.

  My father and I never talked about personal things, and we still don’t. He just can’t do it. A very refined man, with an exquisite sensibility, no doubt capable of truly profound feelings—but putting them into words is beside the point. Bruno Gouvy’s great passion could never have been anything other than painting: a static, visual, contemplative medium. Me, I’ve inherited my parents’ inclinations in equal parts. For me painting and music are perfect partners. If I decided to study architecture, it’s because I think that, as a discipline, it’s halfway between my parents’ interests—it is the perfect point of equilibrium between my parents’ two worlds.

  Don’t get me wrong—it wasn’t all tranquil contemplation. Perhaps Bruno was so guarded because he knew that his passion for painting bordered on madness, sometimes. It was nothing at all to him to travel thousands of miles simply to stand in front of a particular painting. I remember when I was, I don’t know, around ten years old, he asked Nadia and me to accompany him on one of those trips. He had been assigned some duty at the Vatican. Once his mission was completed, he told us that instead of returning to London we were going to continue on to Palermo, and the following morning, he chartered a plane! All because he wanted us to see Antonello da Messina’s L’Annunciata.

  We got to the museum too late, after they’d closed for the day. Still, the curator of the palazzo was waiting for us. Bruno had made an appointment with him through the embassy. They were opening back up again just for us. With the curator leading, we went directly to the room where L’Annunciata hangs. I was too young to really take it in, then, but in retrospect, Bruno was right. It was absolutely worthwhile traveling to Sicily for no other reason than to see Antonello da Messina’s tableau. We spent the night in a hotel in the middle of town, and the following morning, we went to see the painting one more time to say good-bye, as if we were taking leave of a loved one. After that, we headed back to Rome. That’s Bruno Gouvy for you, Néstor.

  So, my father has a peculiar pet theory. According to him, there’s one masterpiece out there in the world for each of us, one great work that holds the key to our character, one work of art that in some mysterious way (he doesn’t care to elaborate) corresponds to what we are, stands as a précis of our soul, who we are, how we feel, the way we look at life, and so forth. During that trip, as she stood in front of Da Messina’s tableau, Nadia came to feel that L’Annunciata was the painting assigned to her, according to the terms established by my father. She kept her feelings to herself until we were in London, where she asked him if the reason he had wanted us to accompany him all the way to Palermo was that he knew that when she saw it, she would recognize herself in the painting. He answered—I think in earnest—that she had it all wrong; the reason he’d asked us to go with him to Palermo was that being in Rome had for some reason made him itch to see the original of a work that had fascinated him for a long time. Even though he only knew it through reproductions, he was sure it would be magnificent, and he had wanted to share the experience with those he loved most in life.

  Bruno’s favorite painting? Of course I don’t mind telling you, it’s no secret. Vermeer’s View of Delft. My father keeps a catalogue containing the particulars of the locations all of the canvases of the Dutch master, which are scattered all over the world, and which also provides substantial information about the works that have been lost. He’s made a pilgrimage to every single place where the known Vermeers are kept—all of them, without exception. He’s managed to get even the most intractable owners of the most inaccessible paintings to open their doors for him. Even the royal house of England granted him permission to study the Vermeers in their possession. When my father comes to see me in New York, the first thing we do is go to the Frick Collection on Fifth Avenue. There are several Vermeers there that aren’t allowed to leave the museum under any circumstances. When Bruno tells me about his trips to the Frick, it’s like hearing someone talk about visiting friends under house arrest. He hasn’t let up—he’s always traveling, always heading off on some adventure to meet up with a new painting he’s dying to know in person, or else to revisit the ones that he misses most: Kandinsky, Fragonard . . . well, it’s an endless list, and it takes in pretty much all of human history . . . His last trip, as you know, was to the Ensor exhibit. I try, whenever possible, to go with him on his pilgrimages, like we used to do with my mother before she died. I hope he never gives it up.

  Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’ve never seen anyone make quite the same face as you did, earlier, when I told you my name. I wish you could have seen it yourself. Some people are kind of surprised when they first hear it, although heaven knows you have more reasons than most. Do you see, now, why I didn’t want to tell you? I wasn’t trying to be melodramatic or anything. It’s just that since everything is interrelated, giving you an isolated fact like that was entirely out of the question. You would have needed context, and before we knew it, things would have snowballed. That’s also the reason I was reluctant to give you any of Gal’s papers ahead of time. And, for your information, my name is by no means as rare as you seem to think it is. Not that it’s very common even today, but, you know, it’s gotten to be kind of fashionable in recent years. When I was a kid, sure, it got its share of comments, but not lately. Unusual or not, Brooklyn is my name. It’s a mysterious, musical word, to me anyway: full of hidden meanings, like all place names. I remember one day, at school, when I was nine or ten years old—we were still living in London at the time—one of the girls in my class came up with the idea that we should all pick “true” names for ourselves—ones that really corresponded to our personalities, since the ones we bore had been chosen by our parents, not us. Well, you probably did the same thing when you were a kid. No? Anyway, my friends started trying on new names as if they were buying dresses. When my turn came, I said that I loved my name.

  That was another reason why I didn’t want to tell you everything by e-mail. I’m not really over it—losing my mother. I was devastated. Maybe I’ll never be over it, really. She died in the middle of the summer. Bruno had already been transferred to Tokyo, so that’s where she left us. Thankfully, it was a relatively quick death. My uncle Sasha, who had always been very close to her, stayed with Nadia till th
e end. Some of Bruno’s family from Belgium also came. She was cremated, you know, and once it was all over, Bruno and I couldn’t quite get back to reality. Hallucinatory solitude, I’d call it. We lived more alienated than ever from the outside world. I don’t remember the rest of the summer very well. Each of us tried to comfort the other as best we could. Mostly, Bruno spent all his time looking after me, neglecting himself—that’s just the way he is. Who knows how many weeks had passed before he was able to pull himself together and go back to work. At the end of the summer, we had to separate. He had no intention of letting me abandon my studies. As much as it hurt, I had to return to Cooper Union. We were so far away, it was impossible for us to see each other more than once a semester. Bruno had an absolute horror of long phone conversations, but this was our only comfort during these days. He called me two or three times a week. During a conversation in mid-October, he announced apropos of nothing that when we next saw one another, he would tell me something or other about my mother. I got very nervous. It wasn’t like Bruno to be mysterious—I guess I’m not a chip off the old block, in that respect. Anyway, he wouldn’t worry me like that if it weren’t something very important. He picked up on my anxiety and told me there was nothing to get all upset about. He didn’t say anything else and I didn’t insist. Knowing how difficult it is for him to speak about personal stuff, I didn’t have the heart to push him.