May 6, 1994
Poste restante—the last letter sent to Gal was returned—unopened—inside the envelope a note from Frank Otero—Gal died almost two years ago—buried at a place called Fenners Point, near Deauville
I put away the diary and shut off the light, although I knew that I wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep. Right next to the bedroom window there’s a neon sign that flickers on and off all night long. I leave the window shade up on purpose, usually, because instead of bothering me the incessant blinking makes me sleepy. The room is completely dark one second (or as dark as any room ever is in New York City) and in the next bathed in a halo of red and blue. In May of 1994, when my mother had written the last entry in her diary, I was six years old. I thought about all the blank pages that followed it. It was as if with the death of that man a very heavy door had been slammed shut, cutting off Nadia’s contact with her past. It’s funny how the imagination works. The name Fenners Point bounced around in my head. I’d never heard of the place, just as I had never heard of Deauville. It sounded made-up.
I tried to picture the cemetery, but the blinking of the neon sign finally worked its magic, and I dozed off. For a moment, on the threshold of a new dream, the neon signs outside seemed to spell the place names that Nadia had recorded in her diary. Fenners Point. Deauville. The following morning, I looked them up on a road map I have in my room. I couldn’t find them. I had to use one of those enormous atlases that sit on lecterns, in the Cooper Union library`. I felt a bit silly, being so curious about the resting place for the mortal remains of a man I couldn’t help but wish had never been a part of my mother’s life. It wasn’t long before I’d gotten it into my head that I had to go to that cemetery. I needed to see the grave of my mother’s lover. I told Amanda, my roommate, all about it. She asked me what I expected to find there. Nothing, really, I told her—it was just scratching an itch, so to speak. I told her that I was set on going, one way or the other, and asked her to come with me. We went in her car. The rest you know.
As for the novel, reading it changed things for me. It was no longer my mother’s history alone. Gal’s book is where so many stories cross paths—and a lot of them have nothing to do with Nadia, as you said. For one thing, it’s also about the man who actually did the work of finishing the book—you, Néstor Oliver-Chapman. You know, the papers that I found in the box my father gave don’t always agree with the finished texts in the novel, in terms of how the stories go, the details that get presented. Gal Ackerman wasn’t the most consistent writer—or person, for that matter. It’s not that he lied to you, but he did use you. He left a particular version of things in place so that you would finish the book as he wanted it finished, never mind the truth of the matter. Well, it is fiction, after all. For instance, Gal knew about me and never told you. Nadia wrote a long letter to him to tell him she’d borne a child, a girl, and Gal replied. It’s one of the letters that she kept. Read it, it’s excruciatingly sad. Another thing is that Gal and Nadia did see each other again after that time at Bryant Park. Gal wanted his novel to end with the story of the torn love letter falling from the sky, so he let you believe that that was that. I’m not saying he invented the love-letter thing—my mother refers to it in her diary as well. But, then, she also records—in some detail, actually—their real last meeting, which was very painful. Literature is one thing, life another, as perhaps you need reminding now and again. So, yes, they shouldn’t have done it, but the truth is that they met again. Their last meeting, which Gal forced on my mother, was—naturally—a little traumatic. And I could keep going. There are other things, other remarks in the diary that would have changed the book you wrote, sometimes drastically. I wouldn’t say that they disprove Gal’s version of events—I guess you could say that they complement it. Anyway, Gal made my mother the keeper of certain texts. Clearly, he considered them vital. They’re here, they’re in the box. As far as I’m concerned, though, it all belongs in the novel, and so, rightfully, it all belongs to you. As for me, I just want to forget about it.
I’m glad that I went to Fenners Point, silly though it was. When I saw the title of the book through the glass, my heart leapt. Amanda and I forced open the latch, took out the novel, and started to look through it together. It wasn’t long before we stumbled upon the name Nadia Orlov. Amanda soon stepped aside, seeing I intended to read every word; though, of course, I couldn’t finish the book there and then. We went back to the city immediately, hardly exchanging another word on the drive. As soon as we got home, I locked myself in my room. It felt like one of those dreams or not-dreams I’d been having since Nadia died. When I finished the book, I realized the magnitude of my transgression. Aside from all the things related to my mother, which I perhaps did have the right to know, I’d also meddled my way into the lives of a bunch of strangers. I was trespassing. After a few months, I knew what I had to do: return the novel to Frank Otero, if he was still alive, if the Oakland was still there after so many years. And if I found Otero, maybe I could get to you through him. And if I found you, I could at last get rid of my mother’s papers without having to destroy them.
EPILOGUE
“And over there where dreams are invented
There were not any
For us.”
ANNA AKHMATOVA
Fenners Point, September 2010
Everything had been going so well, but then she interrupted herself to suggest I talk about me for a bit.
I stared at her. About me? I asked. I have nothing to say about me.
Please, she insisted.
The malicious glare in her eyes unnerved me.
My story is irrelevant. I . . . I . . . had nothing to do with all that. Circumstances dragged me into a world I didn’t belong in . . .
I stopped making excuses. Her big green eyes went on drilling into mine. What was it about that those damn eyes? She was giving me vertigo.
In a very sweet voice, she said:
It’s exactly the opposite now from when we were talking by e-mail. Now it’s you who knows everything about me while I know practically nothing about you.
What is there to know?
I’d like to know more about Néstor the man. What you were like before and after Brooklyn. We’re never going to see each other again, so why not? I insist.
The tone of her voice, the way she pronounced her words, the particular angle of her smile, the gestures she made while listening to me, how she brought her index finger to her lips whenever she began talking again after a pause—in short, all her body language during our long conversation seemed to add up to an imperative that I give in, seemed to add up to a sort of seal of approval. And then that stare. The stare above all.
Before and after Brooklyn? I repeated.
She nodded, pushing some hair away from her face.
If you want to know the truth, Gal, I think she could have done whatever she wanted with me. After a while, I realized that I was telling her things that I’d never told anyone, not even you or Frank. Did you know that my mother, Christina, was from Seattle, and my father, Albert, was Catalan? Or that I was born in Trieste? Well, those are the things Brooklyn wanted me to tell her about, so I started at the beginning, though I did it in broad strokes, in a rush, because the only thing I wanted just then was to finish as quickly as possible. I told her about my parents’ bohemian lifestyle, their countless trips all over Europe, of my erratic education, the years I spent studying at Summerhill with that amazing nutcase Neil, and later at the University of Madrid, about how Lynd, my mother’s friend, helped me with my master’s in journalism at Columbia. I told her about my beginnings as a freelance journalist, writing for the Village Voice, then my work for the New York Post and Travel. When I reached that part of the story, I told her that I liked to be invisible, and asked her to let me be, that all that had been left far behind. She thanked me, and I knew our meeting had come to an end.
Too bad we never found the grave of Ralph Bates’s great-grandfather, she said, s
miling. It would have been a nice way to say good-bye to all this.
I tried, but it was a dead end, I said. Maybe I’ll try again before I leave. Who knows? It’s definitely here, that’s for sure.
There was a long silence. I lifted my eyes to the blue sky of Cádiz. The midday sun battered the graves, the whitewashed walls with their niches, the mausoleums. When my eyes came to rest on Brooklyn again, she stood up and said:
I really appreciate your taking charge of my mother’s papers. Pushing the hair from her face, she shook my hand and added:
It’s been . . . very strange, Néstor, but I’m glad I met you.
Brooklyn, I said.
She waited for me to go on, but when she realized I wasn’t going to, she turned and walked away.
You know how people say, sometimes, “I wasn’t myself at the time”? Well, I wasn’t. I had become you. It was a dream, or a hallucination, or perhaps I was finally losing my mind for good and all. Yes, I must have gone completely mad, because none of it made any sense, or maybe it made too much sense. As Brooklyn said, it was like a movie—but I felt that I was a spectator now, not an actor; as though I was watching myself up on the screen in one of those old movies that feel like they have to toss in a dream sequence designed by Dalí, or something, in order to wrap up their plots. I took very precise notes on my conversation with Brooklyn as soon as my faze passed. I wanted to be able to read it to you now. It wasn’t that difficult. I remembered each and every word with painful clarity. Although I no longer had Brooklyn in front of me, her body, her face, especially her eyes, were still very much present. I felt as though I were under siege—everywhere there were signs and symbols pulling me into the past, and then into my own very uncertain future. It took a while, but I was finally able to make some sense of the feelings pressing in on me.
I stared at the box of papers Brooklyn had left with me, and said her name aloud twice: Brooklyn, Brooklyn. I felt a pain in my side, as though I’d been stabbed. I felt that and I felt thirsty, a terrible thirst. And I came to understand what was happening to me. I probably don’t need to tell you. You probably guessed ages ago. It was the most elementary and primal feeling that exists, the most basic—the same thing that set our novel into motion in the first place. I recognized the feeling, or to be more exact, I remembered it. But it couldn’t be. It couldn’t be happening to me. It was as if time had shrunk. It was . . . as if I had fallen in love with Nadia. And after I thought that, after the idea took shape, after the words aligned themselves in my head, I was relieved. I hadn’t fallen in love with Nadia because the woman I’d had in front of me wasn’t her.
As all those thoughts whirled in my head, my eyes remained fixed on her receding figure. Brooklyn Gouvy was walking between two rows of graves, moving farther and farther away from me. The sunlight sparkled on the graves, the flowers, the metal of the epitaph plaques. A very hot morning. Wisps of sultry air rose from the ground in little clouds, as though the earth were a giant, asthmatic animal expiring in the dust. The haze softened the edges of things as clouds of mist continued to rise from the asphalt, translucent little clouds that trembled and danced. I kept my eyes on Brooklyn Gouvy, feeling that odd pain in my side, until she made it to the gate and disappeared without having turned once.
We will never see each other again, she’d said.
Absurdly, I dashed after her. My footsteps echoed and cracked down the alley, widely spaced, mixing with the other indistinct midday sounds. As I ran, the silhouettes of the cypresses danced in my peripheral vision like drunken sorceresses. A horde of unconnected scenes were piling up in my imagination. I felt as if I were being dragged from myself, as if I would have to die in the dust in a moment or two. But I made it to the gate. She had turned left. I looked in that direction and saw a silver-gray Mercedes with diplomatic plates, and next to it, two figures. Brooklyn was resting her head on the shoulder of a tall, elegantly dressed, aristocratic-looking gentleman. The man ran his hand through her hair and gave her little taps on the back as she sobbed. Neither Bruno Gouvy nor her daughter realized that they were being watched. The image remained frozen in time for a while. There was a whitewashed wall, a row of cypresses, a stone path that led to the door of a chapel. The Mercedes was parked very near the curb. Bruno Gouvy took his daughter by the shoulders then, raised her chin, pushing it up delicately with his index finger so she would look him in the eyes, and gave her a handkerchief so she could dry her tears. Then he walked her to the passenger door of the car and opened it for her. Gouvy’s movements were gentle, delicate. He closed the door and then went around and got behind the wheel. The engine came on with a slight whirr and the tires bit into the gravel. I made myself visible. With uncertain steps, I moved to the middle of the street. The car stopped a short distance away and both of them looked back at me. Through the windshield I could see their faces clearly—his fine-featured, with a bronze complexion, hair the same color as the Mercedes. And Brooklyn, the living image of her mother. I stepped to one side and the car continued on its way very slowly. Bruno Gouvy raised his hand and smiled with his eyes, without moving a muscle in his face. As they passed by, I put my hand on the window, the fingers spread in a fan, and Brooklyn did the same, she put her small, delicate hand on the glass, though her fingers were pressed together, not apart. It could have been a good-bye caress, had it not been for the hot glass between the palm of her hand and mine. Then she pulled away and waved. The car moved past the gravel path, turned right to get on the main road, and disappeared.
I stood motionless in the middle of the road, not sure what to do, as I replayed everything in my mind, rewinding and then sitting through the surreal dream sequence once more. It was as if night had suddenly fallen, as if a total eclipse had descended on the Bay of Cádiz. I remembered one such eclipse, the only one I had ever experienced, when I was a child at Summerhill. Mrs. Dawson had warned us it was coming, around noon. When the time grew near, instead of going to the main pavilion to witness the event with the others, as we had been instructed to do, I hid in the nearby woods. Sitting on a rock, I watched as something that was not quite night descended upon us, a nameless darkness that covered everything like a big black sheet, until little by little, things returned to normal. It was the same, now, at the cemetery. What before had been clear images became shadows. Shadows, I thought, or maybe it was a voice inside me giving dictation. Shadows, the voice said, only shadows, shadows without end. Everyone who was once a part of that world was gone forever—a whole universe had been erased. The beings that once inhabited it, full of life, were now little more than smoke. I could hear again the chorus of pealing bells near Hotel 17, where I rented a room when my marriage was disintegrating. Those dreadful hotel rooms occupied by old homeless couples who smoked marijuana and watched cartoons on TV all night long. Back then, first thing in the morning, as I woke, the peal of the bells of a nearby church made me think for a moment that I was still in Europe, still a child. In the calm of the cemetery, I heard the wind whistle down on me from afar, a wind that as it passed wanted to erase everything still remaining. And, at that moment, I, who thought I’d been dreaming of the shadows cast by everything that bore the name of Brooklyn, realized that there were no shadows, only brilliant lights that bleached the world. Everything was white, ash-white in the heat—the walls, the box holding the papers Brooklyn had given me, and which she claimed contained what’s missing from this book. But I knew I wasn’t going to read any of it. Because Brooklyn already had a life, the one you wanted to give it. It was the book you wrote for Nadia, and it was done, and nothing and no one could ever change that.
Call Me Brooklyn Page 34