by Ruby Namdar
Although his voyeuristic absorption could not have lasted more than half a minute, it seemed to Andrew an uncomfortably long time. The young man stretched, flexed his muscles, and joined his hands behind his neck in a lazy movement suggestive of a predatory big cat. With the theatrical air of someone accustomed to being stared at, he raised a foot, planted it on a wooden bench, and bent toward it—whether to continue his stretches, or admire himself better from a different angle, wasn’t clear. Almost unwillingly, Andrew’s gaze fell on his sturdy hip and the delicate curve of his calf, circled his thin ankle, and dropped to his arched foot on the waxed bench. The vitality, the perfection of his young body! Only rarely did one encounter such pure beauty in the raw. It wasn’t to be found in slick magazines, ads, or fashion pages.
The gorgeous young man straightened up. Something in the way he moved, as though for a camera, strengthened Andrew’s impression that he knew he was being watched. This was confirmed a moment later when his back muscles undulated in a half turn that became a full pivot that left them facing each other. Two large, golden, catlike eyes looked straight at Andrew with menacing amusement, forcing him, as if caught doing something wrong, to lower his gaze until it was level with the youth’s stomach. Flat and muscular, the center of which was tattooed with a large, sinuously rayed sun whose bright radiance seemed to illuminate the room. Warm reds, browns, and oranges encircled the navel. Objects of Platonic desire, a parade of classical images marched through Andrew’s mind as though from the bronze gates of an ancient city, led by the fiery chariot of Helios, which streaked across the sky harnessed to four noble steeds whose hooves wildly pounded the blue ether.
The beautiful youth matched Andrew’s stare with his own. His stomach muscles rippled, echoing his hint of a smile and causing the serpentine rays of the sun to splay over his bare skin. Provocatively, with a coquettishness that could only be called feminine, he undid his white towel and retied it around his sharply defined pelvis, allowing Andrew a quick, thrilling glimpse. Though this lasted a mere second, Andrew flushed, his heart racing. His gaze, recoiling from the unveiled pit of Eros as though from an electric shock, once more met the young man’s, in which was now a captivating challenge. The eyes, suddenly more brown than gold, flashed a warning that (ah, how wonderful, how terrible, the thought of it!) was at the same time an impish invitation. For a second or two, their glances remained locked. Andrew, frantically adopting a neutral expression suitable for a chance encounter, was the first to look away. Nothing had happened! Nothing had passed between them! Nothing, nothing at all.
He turned back to the corridor leading to the showers, leaving his belongings in his locker. Stripping off his sweaty gym clothes, he threw them in a corner instead of arranging them in their usual neat pile and hurriedly locked himself in a shower stall. The young man’s eyes, which still bored into his bare flesh, now seemed to have been more black than brown. For a long time he stood beneath the hot water, his mind an irritating cacophony of voices and thoughts. Though he knew very well why he was taking so long, he couldn’t help but marvel at himself. It was impossible to get dressed without going to his locker. What if the youth were waiting for him there?
Ridiculous! Why should he be? Nothing had happened between them! Still, he was wasting precious time. He had to get back there before the youth disappeared! Not, of course, that he was attracted to men—and you couldn’t call this an attraction, either. Absolutely not! It was a moment of confusion, a temporary loss of coordinates, nothing more.
Andrew shut the faucets, emerged from the shower stall, and set about drying himself—more slowly than usual, so it seemed. Or was it more quickly? Throwing back his shoulders, he took a deep breath and headed for the locker. Suppose he was there? Why was his heart beating so fast? He breathed deeply again, leaving the air trapped in his lungs, and turned to the slate floor of the locker area, desperately trying to convince himself that it was all absurd, a molehill turned into a mountain.
The locker area was deserted. Where was the young Greek god? Gone! Nothing remained of him. Who knew if he had ever been there? Andrew stood there, stunned, for a moment. Was he relieved or bitterly disappointed? He couldn’t tell.
And yet why feel disappointment? He hadn’t really been hoping that the young man would be there. He made himself go to his locker, took out his clothes, and dressed with an affected everyday nonchalance. Was there a man who hadn’t thought once or twice in the course of his sexual experience that . . . no, not that he was homosexual . . . but that he might be turned on by men, too? The categories of gender behavior were among the most easily challenged. He had taught countless classes of students to question conventional versions of them and analyze them as social constructs.
Enough with this pseudo-academic verbiage! He had had a long, hard day. He pulled on his pants, tucked his buttoned shirt into them, and fastened his belt. The warm, dry, sobering clothes restored him to reality. He had no plans for the evening. Would Ann Lee be coming over? The thought of it made him uncomfortable. Recently, there had been too much of that. He found himself less and less looking forward to spending time with her. On second thought, there was no dilemma, she was busy tonight. Yet the open relief this made him feel was enough to cloud whatever peace of mind he had left. Something was not right. Something had stopped flowing between them. Their conversations had grown shorter, more practical. Their sex life, too, was suddenly a sad, embarrassing shadow of itself. What had happened to their remarkable physical and mental chemistry? Where had it gone, that mutual magnetism that was too strong to be put into words? There had been a time when, at some seminar or conference, or in the middle of a cocktail party or dinner with university donors, a hot rush of desire for her would startle him with its urgency. Once, while lecturing to a packed auditorium, he had even had to turn to the blackboard and find some excuse to remain with his back to the class until the physical excitement produced by the thought of her had passed. Where had all that gone to? It now seemed part of another life.
The beautiful youth had disappeared without a trace. Suppose he had given him an open, explicit, come-on? Andrew would have gone with him, gone wherever he chose to lead him.
18
May 4, 2001
The 11th of Iyar, 5761
Eleven thirty a.m. The classrooms are deserted. The approaching weekend felt in the hallways. The spring semester has ended all at once. It was too quick, the spring, too unsettled and unsatisfying. Mature foliage hurried to take its place on the branches, pushing aside the bright green plumage of new leaves. The pink, white, and yellow blossoms fell too fast, impatient to get it over with. The tulips and daffodils, too, more artificial-looking every year, flowered and wilted prematurely, their petals going overnight from a freshly budding virginity to a final decadence in which they resembled the gaping loose genitals of old animals.
As though at the wave of a magic wand, the corridors of the university have emptied out on the first day of the summer vacation. The lively commotion of the semester’s end has vanished abruptly. The term papers have been submitted, the exams marked, the final grades handed in to the departmental secretaries. Now, at this very moment, the students are heading for faraway summer destinations, avid to replenish their future fund of youthful memories with new bathing suits, snorkeling masks, large quantities of bad beer, and summer romances. The teaching staff, too, hears the tick of the great clock. Another year of research has gone by with its conferences, publications, prizes, and grants; another milestone has been passed on the road to tenure; another graduating class has soaked up what was required of it and gone out into the world. The empty corridors are filled with a solemn yearning. Time lingers on in them by itself, smiling and contented, savoring a few last minutes before packing up and moving on, too.
Andrew sat in the cafeteria, the day’s third cup of coffee (it was about time he woke up!) slowly getting cold on the table. He had forgotten to finish it. His bleary, reddish eyes stared absently into space. Tiny motes of
dust swirled like feathers in the diagonal shafts of light pouring through the high windows. With one hand, he automatically stroked the bristles on his cheeks. His rash was almost gone. In a few more days, he could shave and look himself again. Naturally, Ann Lee, little devil that she was, hadn’t missed the chance to call him “Grandpa.” Soon riders on the subway would have started giving him their seats, deferring to an old age that left him uncertain if it was real or imaginary. He smiled tentatively to himself. He wasn’t complaining. It had its enjoyable side. There was something comforting about his new beard. It gave him, so it seemed, an Old World venerability, the look of a tribal elder or Hasidic rabbi.
He raised the cup to his lips, took a sip, and made a face. The coffee, the tang of its bitterness gone, was cold and undrinkable. He had already been to the office to check that all was in order. All the term papers had been returned to their authors—all except for one oddly handwritten one that was still waiting in its box, a strange fledgling in an abandoned nest. Whose work could it be? Who had written it? Why hadn’t he come to pick it up? Andrew was loath to concede that he felt let down. Why should he care? Yet there had been something annoying about Ms. Harty today, something insidious in the way she had said with a sly, last-second smile, “You do know, Professor, that the final date for filing for an extension passed a week ago, don’t you?” And what exactly had Bernie meant by “We have to face up to there being other forces at work behind the scenes. It’s not entirely up to us, if at all . . .”? Forces behind the scenes? Nonsense. What could they be? He should take Bernie out to lunch sometime and feel him out.
The stimulating sight of bared flesh brought Andrew back to earth. The young student sitting at the next table with her back to him had suddenly leaned forward over the book she was reading. Something, a footnote or diagram, had called for closer examination. Her blouse lifted, revealing a curvaceous waist and a white lower back on which a shockingly graphic blue tattoo made her pale skin look even more exposed. Its effect was giddying. Yet the impulse he felt was not an ordinary sexual one. It was more primitive, a child’s instinct to peek that took him back to prepuberty. Half-unthinkingly, he leaned forward himself to scan the intricate, attractive tattoo, his eyes drawn to two winning dimples on either side of it. From there, they continued downward to where the sensuous delta of the young woman’s buttocks disappeared in the dim recesses of her pants.
His change of posture stretched Andrew’s shirt over his stomach, opening slant-eyed spaces between the buttons. It wasn’t the first time he had noticed this happening, especially when the shirt was close fitting. Although the knowledge that he was putting on weight worried him, it also gave him a not unpleasant feeling of intimacy with his declining body, one that the elderly possess.
Enough of this melodramatic posturing! He should be exercising more regularly. His eyes traveled back up to the tattoo, which seemed to float above the creamy skin. What did she look like from in front? Should he find some excuse to get up and see? Of course not. What an objectionable idea! He suddenly felt that the student’s youth formed an impassable gulf between them. Sex with her would be not only obscene and incestuous but quite simply impossible, a biological contradiction in terms. It was as if their ages had placed them on two different sides of an invisible barrier, like members of separate species that were incapable of mating.
What time was it? Eleven forty-five. His class began in half an hour. Pushing against the table, Andrew rose heavily from his chair and headed for the exit. No, he would not turn around to look at her face. Absolutely not. He would throw his cold coffee in the trash bin and go straight to the elevator. And the term paper in its box? Sooner or later, someone would come for it.
He walked down the empty corridor as though at gunpoint, mindless of where he was going or had come from. The bittersweet stir of the semester’s end had left him cold. Nothing was concluded; no closure had been reached; there was no feeling of catharsis. No equation of time, memory, and longing had been solved. The corridors were empty. The floors were littered with papers and empty cups. The cleaning staff had yet to arrive.
END OF BOOK FOUR
BOOK
FIVE
1
May 10, 2001
The 17th of Iyar, 5761
Over in the meadow,
In the sand, in the sun,
Lived an old mother turtle
And her little turtle one.
“Dig,” said the mother.
“I dig,” said the one. And they dug all day
In the sand, in the sun.
A small girl’s voice chimed sweetly in the room. She was singing right next to him, into his ear, enunciating each syllable with a touchingly childish precision. Andrew shut his eyes tight, refusing to wake up. He recognized the song immediately. It made his heart beat faster. It was “Over in the Meadow,” a haunting old nursery rhyme that Linda had sung with Rachel when putting her to sleep, rocking her in her lap while leafing through its illustrated book. Linda had had a beautiful voice, clear, pure, and amazingly rich. He even remembered the book. It had old-fashioned, curiously exact drawings of turtles, foxes, robins, and bees. But why this dream? From where had the distant memory of this song surfaced? How many years had it been since he last heard it?
Over in the meadow,
Where the tall grasses grew,
Lived an old mother fox
And her little foxes two.
“Run,” said the mother.
“We run,” said the two.
So they ran and were glad
Where the tall grasses grew.
The ghostly voice was singing again. Andrew shivered. It wasn’t a dream! How was that possible? Who could be singing at this hour? He was totally awake now, gripped by anxiety, though his eyes remained tightly shut. Where was the voice coming from? Could it be the next-door apartment? But the walls weren’t made out of paper. She was singing on and on. Her sweet voice sent a chill through him. He didn’t want it to stop. If only it didn’t. If only it would go on forever.
Over in the meadow,
In a nest in a tree,
Lived an old mother robin
And her little robins three.
“Sing,” said the mother.
“We sing,” said the three.
So they sang and were glad
In the nest in the tree.
It was the voice of a siren, a little urban siren. I would go to the far ends of the earth for a voice like that. But it was already fading, already beginning to vanish, leaving behind a transparent wake, the shadow of a shadow, an echo of an echo. He mustn’t open his eyes. He mustn’t open them now! What was he more afraid of? That she wouldn’t be there if he did or that she would be? He mustn’t! Maybe she would sing it again. The sweetness of that voice. You could drown in it. You could dissolve in your own tears and drown from so much longing and sorrow. Was it a dream? A hallucination? He didn’t care. He just wanted her to sing some more. Why wasn’t she singing?
2
May 11, 2001
The 18th of Iyar, 5761
Nine a.m. The spring semester had officially ended the day before. Summer vacation had begun. It was already unseasonably hot. The wind had stripped the last tender buds of May from the branches and a blazing sky stared cruelly down, melting the hazy, golden outline of the horizon.
Yet the apartment felt fresh and cool. The tiles of the bathroom walls released the pleasant chill stored up in them during the night, evoking a dim, bittersweet memory of a once boundless purity. Bare-chested, a towel around his waist, Andrew stood facing the mirror, a new razor blade on the marble counter of the sink, carefully lathering three weeks’ growth of beard. It wasn’t a day for whistling or cheerfully humming snatches of nameless arias. As much as being clean-shaven again was a cause for renewed optimism, he felt tense and on edge. He had mixed feelings about parting with the soft white bristles that had hidden him from the world, enabling him to commune with himself for a while. Had it not been so absurd, h
e would have said he was afraid to confront the person they concealed. And shaving was far from simple. The new blade, though sharp, traversed the matted hair with difficulty and had to be rinsed after each stroke.
In the end, however, the bristles’ stubborn resistance yielded to the forces of circumstance and fashion. One by one, broad swathes of pale, soft skin appeared on Andrew’s face like harvested fields. They resembled the white skin beneath his wedding ring when he had removed it after his divorce. His finger had looked naked and vulnerable, like a deep-sea creature forced to the surface. Although the white patch disappeared within a few weeks, it was hard to get over this last sign of a covenant, stamped in his flesh, that gradually faded as his skin adjusted to the air and light.
He was almost done. Rinsing the last of the lather, he leaned over the sink for a better look at his old-new face. The rash on the cheeks had vanished without a trace. The skin was smooth—if anything, too smooth. Without its beard, the naked line of his lips looked exaggerated, almost feminine. In the past three weeks, he had grown heavier. Was that what he had been afraid of discovering? All those years of lavish, guilt-free eating were finally taking their toll. Not that he was getting fat, far from it. He had simply put on a bit of weight. He needed to cut down on the carbs and stop cutting corners at the gym. Quickly, involuntarily, his right hand slid down to his waist, lightly fingered its fold of flesh, and returned to the marble counter. Although the man staring back from the mirror was still handsome and well kept for his age, his Peter Pan, golden-boy look had vanished almost entirely. His chin was rounder, his cheeks plumper. Even his hair had lost its exotic sheen and was now an ordinary, everyday gray.