Kyra

by Carol Gilligan

  We crossed the bridge, walked down the steps and along the path to the end where a ramp led up.

  “I can’t deal with a restaurant,” I said. “All I want is hot coffee and a sandwich.”

  We were standing across from the ugly hotel.

  “If you’ll settle for soup, I’ll make you lunch.” He was staying with a musician friend, a person, he said, who existed on soup. The apartment was only a few blocks away.

  It turned out to be homemade, a spinach soup. He heated it up, cut slices from the loaf of dark bread. I took off my boots, dried my hair with a towel. An old Viennese apartment, large windows, the furnishings elegant but simple. A round marble table, the piano at one side, behind it a wall lined with books and scores. I settled into a chair.

  “Lunch is served,” he said, “such as it is.” He brought the soup to the table, opened the wine. “There are no guarantees, but we have to celebrate. You were magnificent. And now I’ll tell you more of the reasons.”

  He thought for a moment, picked up his glass. “Let’s take a chance and drink to us.”

  The wine, the hot soup warmed my body. I took off my sweater, adjusted my blouse. I was wearing the necklace Lily had given me. I touched it, the jade still cool.

  He put down his spoon, leaned back and studied my face.

  “To begin with, I loved that you waited at the beginning, took in the audience, and then spoke directly to us. And it was so clear, the slides meshed with what you said, your descriptions enhanced what we saw. It was like a pavane, a dance, the way everything unfolded. The island, the Akha, you had your own zang. I’d never seen a presentation like this before. It was, to use one of your favorite words, translucent. The light passed through you, through everything you said.

  “I found myself thinking about Jesse, about this time with him. It had that quality, his openness to the world led me to see how I had boxed myself in. I had been caught in a past I had been trying to free others from. Listen to yourself, I said one day. And it’s true, I hadn’t been listening.”

  He picked up a slice of bread, buttered it.

  “You know, Kyra, what I said to you last night about being fragmented. I’ve been working in so many different places, trying to assemble a company, raise the money, do my work. But it isn’t how I feel now.”

  I wasn’t sure that was it. Still, something inside me turned.

  “Coffee?” he asked.

  He brought the cups to the table in front of the sofa. The tulips hung over the sides of the vase. I leaned back, propping my feet against the edge.

  “You know that singer you liked last night—that’s how you were this morning. The talk itself was fluid, the flow seemingly effortless. There was a clarity in your face I hadn’t seen before.”

  “A lot has happened.”

  “I know,” he said.

  I hesitated a moment.

  “To me as well as to you,” I said.

  I told him about Greta, the conversation with Lily about Simon.

  “There are things I knew, but couldn’t allow myself to know. With Simon.”

  I picked up my glass, put it down.

  “Here’s what I didn’t let myself admit. That it wasn’t perfect. He wanted many children. I needed to do my work. He would say, it won’t be a problem. I receded into myself. And then he died.”

  I let out a breath.

  Andreas sat quietly, taking it in. Then he drew in his cheeks, his face narrow.

  “And with us?”

  I stared at the empty coffee cups.

  “The world turned upside down,” I said, looking away and then at him. “When you left in the way you did, everything I thought I knew, everything I had felt between us, knew in my body, suddenly made no sense. I didn’t know what was real.”

  His face paled, a look of pain.

  “I think you know how I feel,” he said. He paused, his eyes darkening, the color of slate. “I think you’ve always known. But then I confused you. Because I was confused. I thought at the time that our love was a distraction from what I felt I had to do, that the very strength of my passion for you would deter me from achieving my goals in the world. It’s not how I see it now. If anything, loving you was a breakthrough, but I didn’t see it then. If I could…”

  He picked up my wrist, looked at the scar.

  “If I could promise you anything, it would be never to confuse you again. Because you were right, it was true. It was like looking into the sun. That summer on Nashawena, there was so much sun, and something in me missed the shadows. It would be like imagining Tosca with a happy ending. Who would come?”

  A rueful smile.

  Just listen, a voice inside me said.

  “Listen,” he said, “I have a friend who is a botanist, a serious man infatuated with plants. This winter he traveled to the Amazon to see a flower. Because it wasn’t supposed to bloom. And it did. Twice in one century.”

  “You’re making this up.”

  “I swear it’s true.”

  He put his arm around my shoulder, his hand resting on my breast. My nipples hardened.

  “Come,” he said.

  I glanced at my watch. It was two o’clock.

  I took it off and left it on the table.

  “I want to see you,” he said.

  He turned on the lamp beside the bed.

  Outside the snow fell steadily, curtaining the window.

  “I want this to be everything you want,” he said.

  A pulse started, deep within my body.

  He unbuttoned my blouse, my camisole white against the dark walls.

  He touched my shoulder, ran his finger down my arm.

  The room was still.

  I leaned back against the wall.

  He took off his sweater, his shirt, his chest winter-white.

  I traced the pattern of hair, spreading out from the midline.

  “You are so beautiful,” he said, looking into my face, “so incredibly beautiful.”

  There were times when I looked at the light, fading outside the window, the glow of the lamp intensifying, spreading across his face. A language beyond words, dolphins calling to one another, swimming alongside, finding the currents, diving deep. And behind my eyes, colors—orange-reds, yellow-greens. And he then on top of me, hands braced against my shoulders, seeing in each other not a reflection but surprise. That this could happen, history vanishing, holiness entering the room.

  He brought a glass of water to the bed. It was almost dark. Friday night.

  He began to hum, I recognized the tune, my mother lighting the candles, the ancient melody. Shalom aleichem.

  And maybe that was what it was about. Redemption. That it was possible in Vienna, after all that had happened, to welcome the Sabbath. I told him what Roya had said, that love was the revolutionary emotion. He smiled. “It’s true,” he said, “it’s the emotion that allows things to turn.”

  We spent the night together, his soup-loving friend away from the city. In the morning, I went back to the conference and he took the train to Budapest. And because we were holding something so fragile, neither of us said anything about plans.

  “I have just taken a leap off a dock,” I said to David, settling in beside him. He studied my face. “But Kyra, you know how to swim,” he said.

  The room quieted, the speaker began, someone I knew from school. A calm came over me. The high, columned hall, slides on the screen, the voice explaining, a project unfolding. An odd sensation, a feeling at once of beginning and completion. He was heading for Budapest, I would go back to Boston via Rome.

  Anna once said that the past was the best predictor of the future. And then she said to believe that was to commit oneself to doom.

  I had dinner with Richard that night, he flush from the island project’s reception. He wanted to talk about next steps, the enlargement of the harbor, the plans for the summer, his mind filled with thoughts of expansion. I remembered the mantra from a yoga class I had taken. I am here, in this room, wi
th you, now.

  The next morning, I flew with David to Rome, my flight paid for by the American Academy since he had arranged for me to give a seminar there. We went to Apulia to see the project he was working on with two Italian architects, integrating landscape in the way he envisioned. He would stay in Italy, give up tenure. You have to act, he said, when the moment comes. I smiled inwardly, a sweet secret. You have to move forward, he said, not back.

  The last night in Rome, the three of us had dinner, David, Sarah, and I. They wanted me to come back to the academy, stay for a year. David had brought a fellowship application, spoken with someone about extending the deadline. Sarah was looking for apartments. “I’ll find one with an extra room,” she said. I felt like an island in a sea of plans, a person held in suspension. For the moment, I needed not to know what would happen. It was a pledge I had made to myself.

  5

  ON THE MONDAY AFTER I GOT BACK TO CAMBRIDGE, I SKIPPED the faculty meeting and called Greta. I got the machine. You have reached the office of Greta Blau. The sound of her voice. “It’s Kyra,” I said, suddenly flustered. “I’m back.”

  A stack of mail and a pile of pink message slips lined up on my desk, neatly arranged by Hannah, the assistant—her form of welcome. I had a syllabus to complete. The gray cinder-block walls drained the light. David was in Rome, Roya wouldn’t be back for a week. I had offered to teach her class. I switched on the lamp to dispel the bleakness and started with the mail.

  The line of Hungarian stamps caught my eye.

  I fished the envelope from the pile, the sight of my name in his handwriting producing a wave of joy, then apprehension.

  I took the kettle from the shelf and went to fill it, the corridor blessedly deserted.

  The bathroom door opened, the sound made me jump. Hannah emerged, her round face brightening, the perennial quiver around her mouth. “Oh, Professor Levin, I hope you had a good trip. If you can get me your syllabus by tomorrow morning, I’ll have it photocopied for your class.”

  I forced my face into a smile. “Hannah, you’re a gem.”

  The waiter boiled quickly, the kettle switching off with a firm click. I spooned some Earl Grey into the strainer, balanced it on the rim of the cup, and poured the water over the tea, watching the color darken.

  With tea in hand, I forced myself to settle into the battered armchair. I stared at the envelope, took a sip of the tea, which scalded my throat. I put the cup on the floor and took out the letter.

  Dearest K,

  I wasn’t sure where to find you but I figured you would show up at work. It’s Tuesday night late, less than a week, and I can’t stop thinking about our time in Vienna.

  The aura that surrounded us dissolves the gloom here. It contains the key to the hope of my life. There was very much that same quality Thursday night—my fragmented attempts to explain what cannot be explained, the “realities” which are no more realities than dirt on the hands of an obsessive, and then on Friday, your answer to it all and your affirmation of the power of love over the power of despair. The challenge you lay down to me is to accept this affirmation.

  Oh Kyra, I have promised myself never to hurt you again. What you must know now is that I love you in a way I have never loved anyone before, and for reasons that you also know, it’s hard to admit this to myself.

  I’m listening to Schubert, the B-flat piano sonata. The last movement begins with a long G octave, the minor key, but then the melody breaks away into B-flat major. The G minor returns, again and again, but it cannot take hold. And that’s how it is.

  Here’s a thought. In March I’m doing a staged reading of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo at King’s College Chapel in Cambridge. There’s an island off the coast of Wales that used to be a pilgrimage site and is now a bird sanctuary. Wouldn’t that be a perfect place for us? You could come for the concert and then we could spend a long weekend or a week on Bardsey. A friend who is one of the trustees said there’s a farmhouse where we could stay.

  So that’s it for now, my goddess of the moon, temptress of chiaroscuro. I see your face in that light, you in your body walking across the room, your openhearted passionate look, your amused look…

  There are no barriers other than time and distance…

  Love, A

  A mix of delight and trepidation. Chiaroscuro, he would say, dark and light, bittersweet, hot and sour. My mother used to play the Schubert sonata, the opening melody like waves rolling in, the ominous trill in the left hand.

  The words, the feelings. I picked up the letter and read it again.

  Greta had said come at the usual time on Thursday and we’ll talk about where we are. There would be no fee.

  I stood for a moment on the small landing outside her door. The sound of a cello inside the house. One of the Bach unaccompanied suites. Was she going solo now? I looked around, suddenly self-conscious. The suburban street was occupied by shrubs, the kitchen window dark. The playing stopped. I waited a few minutes, then opened the door and mounted the two flights of stairs.

  She was turning on the lamps, dressed in black slacks and a white silk shirt. Concert attire or her idea of casual? She had another life. I did too. Something in me wanted to draw back. I overrode the impulse, and for a moment, we were two women in black pants, standing in the room where so much had happened between us.

  Where’s your skirt? I wanted to ask her. I said it and she laughed.

  “I thought we were here to talk about change,” she said.

  When I was a child, we had a large Persian rug, bright red with blues and greens like stained glass. Every year, after the summer, the slipcovers would come off the furniture and we would gather to unroll the rug, back from the cleaners, its colors, brightened, spreading slowly over the floor. Then one year, my parents bought a new rug, deep blue instead of red. “Do you like it?” my mother had asked. I had burst into tears.

  I told this to Greta and she smiled, her face wistful, her gray eyes thoughtful, watching me, as an awkwardness set in.

  I wanted to tell her all that had happened, with Lily, with Andreas, with Anna, who was pregnant. I wanted her quiet attention, her questions leading me to what I had overlooked and to feelings I had not anticipated. But we had come to the end of that journey. Whatever happened now would be different in a way I could not quite envision.

  Was I afraid now of what I had asked for, of being happy rather than aggrieved? Would I even recognize myself? My breath stuck somewhere between my throat and my chest.

  Greta settled into her chair.

  I glanced at the couch, the black leather chair, and chose the chair nearest to hers, the one with sleek wooden arms and flowered upholstery.

  What now?

  I looked at my hands, the ring Lily had given me along with the jade necklace, its stone emerald green. Like your eyes, she had said. She loved my green eyes. You have your mother’s eyes, she had said.

  Greta didn’t say anything. I suddenly felt angry. Why was the burden of this on me?

  Because I wanted this, because it was I who had refused to participate in what Anna had called “extermination.” In spite of myself, I smiled.

  “So,” I said.

  I took a deep breath. “My question is, where are you?”

  “I’m here,” she said. She placed her hands on her lap.

  It’s one thing to take apart a structure, another to build one. We had a lopsided history. She knew a lot about me, I knew practically nothing about her. I caught myself. That wasn’t true.

  “My question is, where are you now in relation to me?” I said.

  She thought for a moment. “I wonder what you know about me that you haven’t said,” she said.

  An invitation to a precipice.

  I thought a moment. “I know that something in your life is unsettled.”

  Her wedding ring shone. I didn’t think it was her marriage. Something about her work, her music, her therapy practice? I remembered Roya’s description of the talk. Greta had come to an
edge in that talk, and then stopped.

  “Remember the first time I came here, when I said I didn’t know what was true or real, and you said, you were talking about Andreas, that it had felt true to me at the time and I had trusted that and then…” I swallowed hard.

  “You started to cry,” Greta said, “and my eyes teared up as well, and you asked me if I did this with everyone.”

  “Right,” I said, “and you said that something in my life had touched something in yours. I knew it was true, but I didn’t know what it was and I thought you didn’t want me to know, so I pulled back. I think that’s built in, the price of love.”

  Her thumb traced the edge of the nail on the fifth finger of her left hand.

  “I wouldn’t,” she said quietly. “I wouldn’t pull back.”

  She looked at me steadily.

  “But here?” I said. Once, as a “talking point,” she had said, why don’t you get on a plane and confront him: say, why aren’t you talking to me, why did you leave?

  At the time, it had seemed an exercise in futility. Because…

  It was what we had talked about. Freezing, going numb, receding rather than coming forward.

  “What’s happening?” she said.

  “I was just thinking there’s something more to it. I was protecting something.”

  “Me? Were you protecting me?”

  “Maybe.” I smiled. “But what I was mostly protecting is something inside myself, some deep sense of conviction. I don’t even know what to call it, it’s in my gut, it’s what I rely on in my work. Even as a child. I always knew about Anton. No one wanted to talk about it. That night when he came for Simon, my father acted as if we didn’t know how dangerous Anton was. And then with Andreas, he could have just said afterward that he wasn’t in love with me, and if he had said that, people would have believed him, and then what could I say? If I said it wasn’t true, I would seem pathetic or deluded, and yet it turned out not to be true. It was something he couldn’t say at the time, maybe not even to himself.”