by Ward Just
Those are Max’s children when they were young, she said, pointing to a framed snapshot of two toddlers at play. I myself have no children.
And you, Wils, she went on. Are you married?
We live in New York, I said. But I am often abroad. So we are often apart.
And children?
We have two boys, both still in school. I was forty-one when the twins were born. That’s too old to be a father for the first time.
I used to regret not having children, Consuela said. Now I regret nothing.
I said, Tell me, Connie. Did you ever publish your memoir?
My God, she said. What a memory. No, I never did. I’m still working on it.
That means you have more to say, I said.
I think it will be finished when I am, Consuela said.
We were standing on the deck now with our drinks. Two freighters moved on the horizon and we were both silent, watching their slow progress. I thought about Consuela’s memoir, knowing now that it was a life’s work and not intended for publication. She lit a cigarette and blew a smoke ring, watching it fall and rise again before collapsing. Something moved against my ankle and I quickly stepped back; but it was only a cat.
Yours? I said.
The neighbor’s, Consuela replied. Filthy animal.
She said, Your twins would be about the age you were when we met.
Just about, I said.
God, I loved that age. All that heat.
I said nothing to that.
But I didn’t think to ask, Consuela said. What is your wife’s name?
Margot, I said.
From New York?
Margot’s a Chicago girl, I said.
An old flame? Consuela asked with a smile.
An economist, I answered. We met in New York.
Ah, Consuela said. The Chicago diaspora.
We found enough to talk about during dinner, the wretched political situation on the island, the new Democratic administration in Washington, movies we had seen, movies we hadn’t. Consuela slowly cleared the dishes, brusquely refusing any help from me, and returned with cups of Turkish coffee and a tray of liqueurs in thimble-sized glasses. When the coffee was poured and we each had a thimble of cognac, Consuela cleared her throat and spoke without preamble.
Aurora went away to Barnard and I never saw her again. There was some business with Jack’s estate but that was handled through lawyers. I stayed on in the apartment for six months or so, not in very good shape, I’m afraid. I didn’t have many friends in Chicago. Jack was my friend and we spent most of our time alone. So I moved to London, then Athens. But I always had my house here when things got tedious. When the estate was finally settled, Aurora and I lost contact completely. Jack left me money and some books and his Brancusi and Aurora resented that, but there was nothing she could do about it. Jack’s will was quite specific. I have no idea where she lives or with whom. I have no idea what she does. So I’m afraid I can’t be much help to you, Wils.
That’s not why I’m here, I said.
Why are you here, then?
She lives in Key West, I said.
You’ve kept up?
No. But every few years she writes a novel and I read it. The author’s note on the last one said she lived in Key West. Before that she lived in Rome. Also Iowa City, Nantucket, Cambridge, and Greenwich Village. There were other cities but I’ve forgotten them. She moves around a lot.
Is she married?
The note doesn’t say. Only the cities.
Why am I not surprised, Consuela said.
I smiled at that.
So Aurora writes novels. It makes sense. She was always writing things down, scraps of conversation, descriptions of things. People, too. She kept a kind of diary, called it her archives. She was forever asking about my early life and about Famagusta, its history, who lived there, the pace of life, what we did. Her questions were quite impertinent. She seemed to think Famagusta was fabulous, a golden city of magic and dreams, a city of the imagination, whereas actually it’s an island city like any other island city. It has a lighthouse, a foghorn, and a fishing fleet. Cathouses near the docks. Hospitable to refugees. I don’t know what she was after. I told her to read Othello, her father’s favorite play. You couldn’t forget for one second that Othello was a general, Jack said. And the play is set in Famagusta.
And did she?
I suppose she did. She read everything else.
I said, A few years back she wrote a novel called The Goldberg Variations that I bought at once, thinking that it might reveal—I don’t know what I thought. I imagine I thought it might have something in it about us. What happened to her father. The situation generally. But it didn’t. The Goldberg Variations was another midlife-crisis novel. And from it I deduced that she was married and that the marriage was not succeeding.
It’s a mistake to infer the author’s life from the author’s fiction, Consuela said.
Do you think so?
Yes, she said. I’m quite sure.
I thought of it when I heard the recording on your stereo.
My little joke, she said.
Mischievous, I said. Aurora told me once that “the Goldberg variations” was a private joke between her and her father.
I think it’ was, Consuela said. Jack had a patient named Goldberg. The variations referred to her. Something sexual no doubt.
Sounds like it, I said.
We sat in silence drinking coffee. I looked at my watch, calculating the time it would take to drive to my hotel in Nicosia. I was leaving on the morning plane to Athens and then to Vienna before returning to New York. I was suddenly sorry that I had come. It was a mistake to try to bridge forty years in a single evening. We had not known each other well then, and the years had not improved matters. We were truly strangers to each other. That afternoon in Lincoln Park was a loose end that would stay loose, a detail of personal history. Still, I had come a long way to see Consuela.
She said, Wils, why are you here? You didn’t answer my question.
I knew where you lived, I said. I wanted to say hello.
Nonsense, she said.
All right, I said. Do you know what happened between me and Aurora?
She said, Ask her. Write her a letter.
I said, I never saw her again. I wrote but she didn’t answer.
She left almost immediately for Barnard, Consuela said. The day after the funeral.
When you walked down the aisle together, I reminded her.
Her idea, Consuela said. Aurora said we’d been through a shipwreck. We were together in the lifeboat whether we wanted to be or not. And after that, we wouldn’t ever see each other again.
I thought it was heroic, the two of you together, facing them down.
You would, she said with a ghost of a smile.
I wish I could have been of some help.
Yes, she said, her ghost smile still in place. I know. But that conflict was not ready for resolution.
Did she think I betrayed her?
I don’t know what she thought. Betrayed would not be the word, though. I think she drew a line between things, and you were on the Before side of the line. What she thought came After is anyone’s guess. But it wasn’t going to be you, Wils. Chicago was not in her future. Chicago was yesterday. Aurora was a very strong-willed girl. She had a broken heart. Her father was dead. She was alone. She knew she would have to make her own way.
What a shame, I said.
Give it a rest, Wils, Consuela said in a voice approximating Aurora’s. The candles began to gutter so that we were sitting in near darkness. She refilled the thimbles and lit a cigarette, the flare of the match illuminating tears in the corners of her eyes. After the shipwreck, Consuela said, Aurora told me she would always be alone. That was her fate. It was written.
Foreordained, I said.
That was what she believed, Consuela said. So she went away.
I’m sorry, Connie.
She shrugged, tobacco smoke
spilling from her mouth, a failed smoke ring.
I have no right to ask these questions, and now I’ve upset you.
You have every right, she said. We all have rights. Isn’t that what you believe in America? Consuela’s words were slurred around the edges and I realized that she was tight.
I said, Why did Jack kill himself?
She shook her head. Her hand went to the button in her ear.
I said again, louder, Can you tell me why—
I heard what you said. I don’t like the question and I don’t know the answer.
You must have a guess. Was it something that happened in the war?
I’m an old woman, she said. I’ve had too much to drink. I’m out of guesses. It was a long, long, long time ago. Certainly the war was in him and all around him but I don’t know what was in his heart. Maybe Jack got tired. People do.
The argument, I said. What was that about?
She gave me a baffled look. Why, we were arguing about Aurora, of course.
You were arguing about Aurora?
I thought she was too involved with you. And Jack was too involved with her, always applauding the decisions she was making for herself. He disagreed. He didn’t want Aurora to miss out on things. His words, “miss out.” And so he was always talking about her life at school and after hours and I didn’t like it. Also, I wanted a child of my own and Jack didn’t want to give me one. Those were the two main lines of the argument. Went on for hours, so as you might imagine there were other elements. I don’t choose to remember them. I did most of the talking because Jack preferred silence to talk. Except when he was talking about Aurora. He got his knocks in but there were fewer of them. It was Jack who insisted that the argument was actually about virtue. I was selfish. He wasn’t selfish. Jack insisted I had no idea what sort of man he was, nor the sort of girl Aurora was. I lacked American insight. But Jack knew nothing of women, not the smallest thing. And beyond that I will not go. And all this time Aurora was listening, writing in that wretched little book she carried around. Satisfied now?
No, I said.
I didn’t think you would be.
Satisfaction doesn’t come into it, I said.
Whatever you want to call it, Consuela said.
I don’t want to call it satisfaction.
It’s late, she said. I’m tired.
There was a note, I said.
Consuela sighed. Yes, Wils, there was a note. She drained her thimble of cognac and followed it with a sip of coffee, the cup rattling in the saucer. I thought she was going to make me ask her directly what the note said and I was determined not to do that. All my life I have trained myself to ask the awkward question, the one that went to the heart of the matter. You pulled on your bully’s face and waited until the answer came, as eventually it always did. But on this occasion I said nothing more, the silence between us lengthening until it seemed to surround the known world. Even the insects paused. Consuela rose, fussing with her earpiece. She hesitated a moment, then looked away from me and said softly, “Farewell the tranquil mind. Put out the light.”
It’s on his gravestone, she said.
Aurora’s decision. I didn’t approve.
They’re lines from Othello, I said.
Yes, she said. I suppose they are.
The time was near midnight. I drove to a café on the quay at Famagusta. I knew it from previous visits. I remembered men playing backgammon and a cheerful ambiance generally. I sat at a table on the sidewalk and watched the boats rock at anchor. I was thinking about memories, memories told, memories kept, memories that meant one thing to you and something else to another. They were incomplete, reduced or enhanced, worn smooth from frequent handling, like a lucky coin in your pocket. Famagusta was a city of memory, one civilization laid atop another; and I suddenly thought of Prince Chigi’s many-storied palazzo in Rome. In Famagusta there were remains of Egyptians, Greeks, Macedonians, Venetians, Genoese, Ottomans, and British. Probably there were others, nationalities long vanished. I imagined that within a short distance of where I sat there were reminders of all the visitors, a fallen column, a cobbled street or a ruined bathhouse, a stable or a square, and of course the lost ships at sea. Substitute memory for architecture and human beings resembled cities. People came into your life without warning, stayed awhile, and went away, always leaving something of themselves behind, a look, a word or a phrase, a gesture. They left their mark and remembering them was a way of remembering yourself at a certain age, nineteen, say, or forty-one, and how you played the hand you were dealt, how attentive you were to the fall of the cards, the bets, and the stakes. How receptive you were to refugees. An oily breeze came off the water, an exhausted whisper of a breeze from the east. The weather was changing. Famagusta was exhausted, overrun again and again, crowded with memories. The poet had insisted to me that its people had no loyalty toward Cyprus. They had lost confidence in it. Whatever affection they had for Cypriot soil or Cypriot history or Cypriot culture had been exhausted and so they lived by myth, in order to successfully account for themselves. On the divided island they had no language of their own, only the imports from Greece and Turkey. They did not have the means to express themselves au fond. Of course the poet was eccentric. He may have been mistaken. Poets always made too much of things. I wondered what sort of life Aurora had found for herself in her nomadic travels and in her work, and if she was still alone or had found someone. Probably a novelist was never alone because she would have all those characters inside her head, a self-created repertory company to keep her occupied—and wouldn’t that be sufficient until night fell? I watched light play upon the surface of the water, the light fracturing as the water moved, slack tide. Inside the café, men were shouting at one another, some backgammon argument. And then the shouts subsided and once again I heard the rattle of the dice cup. In a little while the lights went out one by one and I was alone in the silence of the port at Famagusta.
About the Author
WARD JUST’s sixteen previous novels include Exiles in the Garden, Forgetfulness, the National Book Award finalist Echo House, A Dangerous Friend, winner of the Cooper Prize for fiction from the Society of American Historians, and An Unfinished Season, winner of the Chicago Tribune Heartland Award and a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize.