“But when you speak of your sons it is always with admiration. Is it true you would like to return and do things that might change how they are?” Naohiro asked, smiling.
I laughed. He was right.
But so was I. There were quite a few knots I wished I could go back and untie. Still, it helped to remember how honest and funny and decent my sons were and how fortunate I was to have had them as traveling companions for so much of my life’s journey.
But I also thought of the next part of my life, and wondered if I would travel it alone.
It was not a question about Naohiro, although I didn’t doubt that the closeness between us had nudged it to the foreground. It was really a question about me. Sometimes I feared I’d grown too comfortable with my independence to relearn the give-and-take that intimacy demands.
I liked being in control of my life; of where I went and what I did, of going to bed late and getting up early, of eating meals that suited me when it suited me. Sometimes when I looked back at the days of being a wife and mother, one of the things that most amazed me was that every day I was the one who made the decision as to what three other people would eat. It tired me out now just to think about the effort it had taken over the years to come up with the thousands of meals that would meet the different requirements of my husband and sons. And while I knew that the care and feeding of children was behind me, my fear was I’d grown too selfish—when I was in a better mood I thought of it as having become “set in my ways”—to sustain a life with even one other adult.
But lately another thought kept presenting itself. I’d begun to wonder if my enjoyment of the independent life was more complex than just a matter of selfishness. Perhaps, this line of reasoning went, I was simply a person who, because of age and inclination, had changed her idea of what constituted a satisfying life.
Naohiro and I spent the rest of the day walking. To the busy, trendy Marais district, where the scent of baking bread and spiced meat from kosher delicatessens followed us down the street. To a unique Art Deco synagogue designed by Hector Guimard, the man responsible for the sinuous Métro entrances. To a locksmith museum that featured iron chastity belts and Roman door knockers. To a pawnshop, where we witnessed a sad auction of wedding rings and engraved silver baby bracelets and heart-shaped necklaces complete with pictures of once-loved faces. And finally to the oldest and most beautiful square in Paris: the place des Vosges.
“It is one of my favorite places,” Naohiro said, as we strolled beneath the sheltering arcades that line the square’s pale, salmon-colored brick mansions. “The first time I came, many years ago, as a student, I was thinking of studying architecture.” He laughed. “Instead I went to business school and learned how to build corporate structures.”
Beneath the laughter, however, I detected a note of regret. I asked if this was so.
“I do not believe in regret,” he said, somewhat curtly. “Regret is an illusion. It depends on what might have been. And that is a waste of time.”
The sharpness of his reply surprised me. It also annoyed me. Surely he must remember that earlier in the day, when I’d expressed to him some regrets about my sons, he had responded in a sympathetic way. Was his pronouncement that regret “is a waste of time” a subtle rebuke directed at me? A tiny surge of doubt crackled through my thoughts about Naohiro. Had I misread him? Or was it simply the first sign of reality intruding into our idyllic relationship?
We lingered in the place des Vosges late into the afternoon, sitting in the park, wandering in and out of its shops, stopping to peek into the inner courtyards whenever someone entered or exited through the large wooden doors hiding them from view. We spent a long time gazing in the window of a classy real estate office, studying the photographs of exquisite apartments for sale.
“Which do you like best?” Naohiro asked.
“That one,” I said, pointing to the picture of a spacious, beautifully decorated living room with high ceilings, honey-colored parquet floors, and extraordinary floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the city of Paris. It cost in the millions of francs.
“What about you?” I asked, turning to look at him.
“It also is my favorite.” He paused, then in a wry voice asked, “Shall we buy it and live happily ever after?”
“Yes, let’s,” I said, trying to match his wry tone. “But we’ll have to get rid of all those tacky Oriental rugs. Maybe replace them with tatami mats.”
He laughed. Then without warning he took my face in his hands and gently brushed back my hair. He repeated the delicate movement several times, his hands fluttering like doves about my head. Dizzy, I leaned against him; his body was surprisingly strong and muscular. He leaned back. For several minutes we stood like that, under the arcade of the place des Vosges.
For the second time that day I felt something shift between us. But whatever it was, now I liked it.
When we left the Métro at the rue du Bac, the sun was already moving west, past the Eiffel Tower. We had just passed Deyrolle—an incredible museum of a shop where earlier we’d spent a long time studying hundreds of pansylike butterflies so exquisite that even Nabokov would have been ecstatic—when Naohiro stopped. “Look at that,” he said, pointing. “What is it?”
Immediately I saw what Naohiro had spotted: the green carpet lining the sidewalks at the corner where the rue du Bac and the rue de l’Université meet. I had forgotten to tell him about my discovery that morning of the mysterious Les cinq jours de l’Objet Extraordinaire. When I told him now what had been told me, he was as puzzled as I.
I looked at my watch; it was just 7:15, a time when most shops would have locked their doors for the day. Instead, we noticed that visitors were streaming in and out of the small galleries along the streets. The mood was festive. Outside, silk banners bearing the words CARRÉ RIVE GAUCHE fluttered in the breeze, and gardenia plants and pots of flowering jasmine scented the moist evening air. Inside the shops, people drank champagne from sparkling glass flutes, laughing and chatting, underlining their remarks with the typical Gallic hand gestures and shrugs.
We stopped on the rue des Saints-Pères, in front of a gallery that featured a huge, ancient-looking urn in its window.
“Shall we go in?” I asked. “It seems to be open to everyone.”
Naohiro nodded. We walked in. Immediately someone handed each of us a glass of champagne. Naohiro turned to me and raised his glass: “To the future.”
I was about to return the toast when a Japanese couple approached us. The woman was quite striking. Dressed in a tailored, ivory silk suit, her dark hair held back by two carved ivory combs, she presented an interesting combination of modern western couture and ancient eastern allure. The man, bowing slightly to both of us, turned to Naohiro and began speaking in Japanese. The two conversed for a few minutes—occasionally, the woman would join in—and as they spoke, I studied Naohiro. His presence here in the real world—as opposed to the one he and I had created for just the two of us—only confirmed my estimation of his grace and intelligence, of his desirability. He dazzled me.
Of course, I knew what lay beneath the dazzlement. Or at least the sensible, no-nonsense, feet-planted-firmly-on-the-ground part of me was wise to what was going on. It’s all romantic idealization and adolescent infatuation, this part of me said.
Yes, yes, I know. Now go away, I replied, eager to be reunited with my dazzlement.
Naohiro turned and introduced me to the Japanese couple. They had been explaining to him, he said, the significance of Les cinq jours de l’Objet Extraordinaire. Every year, apparently, the art and antiques dealers of the area—known as the Carré Rive Gauche—hold a celebration for five days and nights, during which time they place in their windows one rare item relating to a chosen theme.
“This year, the theme is ‘Extraordinary Gardens,’ ” said the woman. She explained that this was the third time she and her husband had been in Paris during this festive, open-house event. “It is one time when everyone feels free to walk into th
e galleries, even when you cannot afford to collect such beautiful pieces.” Her English was close to perfect and her voice charming: soft and sibilant, it reminded me of water splashing across pebbles.
We accepted an invitation from the Japanese couple to join them in visiting other galleries along the neighboring streets that formed the Carré Rive Gauche. Passing La Villa, I suggested we stop in to listen to some jazz and have a drink. Immediately, everyone agreed. Later, sitting at a table, I couldn’t help but think about my visit here with Liliane and Justin. Being with a man, I decided, did change a woman’s responses to the world. Sometimes it just made life more fun.
When the four of us exchanged good-byes, it was close to midnight. I could see an indigo sky spilling down into the spaces between buildings at the end of each long narrow street. Naohiro and I walked slowly along the rue Jacob. At this time of night, men and women were returning to their apartments from an evening out, from a good day or a bad one, from whatever routine guided their daily lives. As lamps were lit, small halos of light appeared on the sidewalks, guiding us like stepping stones to some unknown destination.
As it turned out, our destination was a café on the boulevard Saint-Germain, where we sat on the terrace watching Paris go by. Happy and relaxed in a way I hadn’t experienced for a long time, I thought again of how fortunate I was to have this chance to take a detour from my normal life.
I blurted out my thoughts to Naohiro. “I feel so lucky to be here. It’s like a fairy tale.”
His response was immediate. And once again to the point. “No,” he said, “it’s not a fairy tale. This is real.”
In the days that followed I had a mantra: “Let tomorrow come tomorrow.” It was a quote I’d come across a few years back, one I’d never been able to put into practice.
“Let tomorrow come tomorrow,” I thought, waiting at the hotel for Naohiro, trying not to count the days left to us. So far I’d done a pretty good job of it, letting tomorrow come tomorrow. But it was difficult, this living in real time only, and not diluting it by looking back or skipping forward. No wonder it’s never really caught on with most people, I thought. It’s just too hard.
We had arranged to meet at one o’clock, after Naohiro’s final meetings with a group of French businessmen. But he arrived almost an hour late, looking exhausted. He apologized, telling me the negotiations took longer than he’d anticipated. Our plans were to visit Père-Lachaise, a trip I’d looked forward to all week. But he seemed so tired I suggested we postpone our visit and instead have lunch at Madame Cedelle’s salon du thé just a few blocks away on the rue de Beaune. It was a place we had taken a fancy to: the food was excellent and the ambience an interesting combination of coziness and elegance.
Naohiro did not resist my suggestion to abandon the visit to Père-Lachaise. I took it to be a sign of how tired he was.
Outside, a damp wind blew down the streets and fast-moving gray clouds traveled past a barely visible sun. By the time we turned the corner into the rue de Beaune, a few raindrops were hitting the green carpets on the narrow sidewalks. It was the next-to-last day of the five extraordinary days in the Carré Rive Gauche and, against all reason, I found myself wondering if the rain would make the carpets grow.
When we arrived at the café, Naohiro immediately ordered tea. His face, even in the flattering rosy light of the tearoom, looked pale. I wondered if he was getting sick. The tea, however, seemed to revive him, and throughout lunch he seemed his usual self. With one surprising exception: he allowed himself to be more vulnerable than he had been in our past meetings.
“You know what is hard for me to accept?” he asked halfway through the meal. We had been talking about some of the advantages of age. “That the future will come and I will not be in it to see my children and their children grow into old age.”
He told me of once sharing a taxi in Tokyo with a stranger—a man in his fifties—who, for some reason, reminded Naohiro of his son, then twenty. “It is difficult to explain, but I felt myself to be in the presence of my son as he will be thirty years from now. It was a very real feeling—that I was riding in the taxi with my fifty-year-old son.” Naohiro looked away for a moment. “I have never forgotten that experience. It made me both happy and sad.”
I was moved by his words and the longing expressed in them. His willingness to reveal himself stirred in me a similar desire to speak openly of private thoughts.
“Has it ever occurred to you,” I asked him, “that we are shaped more by our sorrows than our joys? When I look back, it’s not the happy times that still have power over my life. It’s the places where things went wrong.”
Naohiro said nothing. But I didn’t really expect a response. It was enough to express such thoughts out loud, without feeling guarded or awkward.
“Sometimes I wonder if that’s all I add up to,” I said. “The sum of my sorrows.”
“And is that so bad? To be the person of your sorrows?” Naohiro asked. He paused for a long time, but I could see he was not finished. “I grew up near Hiroshima fifty years ago,” he said finally, “and I do not forget the person of that sorrow. I bend still to him with respect.”
It caught me off guard, this particular reference to his past. For some reason—perhaps because of my son’s lively young friends in Japan—I tended to connect the Japanese people with the prosperous, influential Japan that now existed, not the ravaged, postwar country of fifty years ago. This glimpse into Naohiro’s life moved me.
I put my hand on his arm, looking into his face to see what was there. What I saw was not what I expected; not the fatigue or illness so visible earlier in the day. What I saw was longing. I recognized it because I felt it, too.
“Let’s go home,” I said. “Let’s go back to the hotel.”
Late in the afternoon, after Naohiro had fallen into a restless sleep, I sat in a chair at the window and watched him. Now what? I thought. Tomorrow had become the next day and then the day after that and the day after that. Soon—tomorrow in fact—we would be down to our final day together.
I needed a way to think about this, about Naohiro. Just a small adventure, perhaps? I was well aware that traveling alone was the perfect setup for brief, intense encounters of both the romantic and platonic kind.
But even as I tried to dismiss, or at least downgrade, what I felt for Naohiro, another voice from some place deeper down said, Face it. This man awakened in you a feeling you’ve been denying. A longing for closeness, the wish to be known and loved. But had I really seen that in Naohiro? Or just imagined it?
I sat down on the bed next to Naohiro. Instantly he awoke.
“Hello,” I said. “How do you feel?”
“Happy,” he replied. “How do you feel?”
“Ready to buy that apartment on the place des Vosges.”
“Even with the tatami mats?”
“Especially with the tatami mats.”
I dreamed that night of the birth of my older son; of the intense bond I felt when he was put into my arms for the first time. Looking down at his face in the dream, I said, Hello. I was wondering when we would meet.
The next morning I awoke feeling that someone was in the room with me. I sat up in bed and looked around. No one was there. Still, the feeling of someone standing close by me was so real that it took several minutes to convince myself I was, in fact, quite alone.
6
THE SLOANE STREET CLUB
Dear Alice,
I came across this postcard of the three Brontë sisters at the National Portrait Gallery. Immediately I thought of three new friends I’ve acquired in London. They love the Brontës’ writing, and Jane Austen’s, as much as I do. It is one of the strongest bonds, I think, that can spring up between people: sharing a passion for certain books and their authors. Alas, my friends are not Nabokov-lovers. Ah, well, you can’t have everything.
Love, Alice
I arrived in London in early July, just after the hot dry weeks of Wimbledon, when the summer had tur
ned rainy and cool. Cold, actually. The shops up and down Sloane Street were filled with tourists buying sweaters and wool blazers. “First the heat and now the cold,” said an American woman trying on jackets in Harvey Nichols, the fashionable department store. Everyone, including me, had been hoping to put off purchasing anything until the mid-July sales, but it was just too cold.
Why was it, I wondered, searching through racks of coats, that no matter how carefully I packed for a trip, I never had the right thing? It was only my second day in London, but already I knew my unlined raincoat wasn’t going to work, no matter how many layers I wore beneath it. What I needed was a heavier coat. But a quick look at the price tags stopped me in my tracks; clearly this was not the store for bargains.
Actually, most of the shops along Sloane Street were out of my price range. Chanel, Gucci, Armani, Valentino, Hermès—many of the pricey one-name designer shops were located here, just south of Knightsbridge. Still, it was fun to window-shop.
As I neared the Hermès boutique I passed a young Japanese couple. Immediately my thoughts went to Naohiro. He was in Tokyo now, probably going to bed or waking up; I wasn’t sure which. In Baltimore I knew how to calculate the time difference so that I avoided waking my son with a phone call in the middle of the night, but here in London I was slightly confused about the arithmetic involved. I decided to picture Naohiro the way I had last seen him: waking up to the Parisian morning sun.
When I reached Hermès, I decided to go in on the pretense of actually intending to buy something. It was a device I used occasionally to check out shops that were way beyond my price range. I considered it my duty as a reporter to observe how the Other Half lives so that, when the occasion arose, I could report on their lives with accuracy.
“I’d like to know the price of the gray snakeskin bag in the window,” I said to the formidable-looking saleswoman standing guard over the locked-up Hermès handbags. She looked me over, always a decisive moment between clerk and client in shops such as this. But I had taken care to dress for just such a situation, in what I liked to think of as my “I’m so wealthy I don’t have to wear clothes that scream MONEY” outfit: a ten-year-old pale gray silk suit, pearls, and a soft, pleated-leather Fendi handbag I’d bought secondhand at a Paris thrift shop.
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