Find Me

by André Aciman

  She waited for me to add something, perhaps to clarify my meaning. But I didn’t.

  “Thought so.”

  “Would you have come in?” I finally asked.

  She thought for a second.

  “No,” she replied.

  “Why not?”

  “I like the older you better.”

  A sudden silence fell between us.

  “Better answer?” she asked, ribbing my arm in a gesture that could easily have meant that even in jest there was earnest and trusting fellowship between us.

  “I am much older than you, Miranda,” I said.

  “Age is what it is. Cool?” she replied almost before I’d finished uttering my sentence.

  “Cool.” I smiled. I’d never used the word this way before.

  “So, have you ever stepped inside the building or gone upstairs?” She was changing the subject.

  Figures, I thought.

  “No, never.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did Miss Margutta hurt you that badly?”

  “I don’t think so. The building has very little to do with her. Other girls came here, though.”

  “Did you like them?”

  “I liked them well enough. I remember one day in particular when I had the flu and had canceled all my classes and lessons. It was one of my happiest days here. I had a fever and no food at home. A girl who was my student heard I was sick and brought me three oranges, stayed awhile, ended up making out with me, then left. A short while later another girl brought me chicken soup, a third dropped by and made hot toddies with so much brandy for the three of us that I think I was the happiest man with a fever. One of those two ended up living with me for a while.”

  “And yet, right now, I’m the one standing with you here. Did that occur to you?”

  There was something unusually pinched in her voice, and I couldn’t tell why. I thought I was confiding my past, the way we’d been doing since riding the train together. Then I gave a light chuckle that I could tell sounded slightly forced.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “It’s not funny, it’s just that you weren’t even born when I used to live here.”

  Neither of us asked why the matter had come up.

  She took out a small camera from her bag. “I’m going to ask these people to take a picture of the two of us, so you’ll know I existed and wasn’t reduced to a fleeting memory like that girl with three oranges whose first, last, and middle name you can’t for the life of you remember now.”

  Was all this a frenzy of female vanity? She wasn’t the type.

  She stopped a couple of American tourists coming out of a store and, handing one of them her camera, asked the blond girl to take a picture of us in front of the building. “Not like this,” she said. “Put your arm around me. And give me your other hand. It won’t kill you.”

  She asked the girl to take another picture for good measure.

  After watching the girl snap a few more times, she thanked her and retrieved her camera. “I’ll send you the photos soon enough so you won’t forget Miranda. Promise?”

  I promised.

  “Does Miranda care that much?”

  “You still don’t understand, do you? When was the last time you were with a girl my age who’s not exactly ugly and who is desperately trying to tell you something that should have been quite obvious by now?”

  I had suspected she was about to say something like this, so why did it give me a start and make me hope I’d misread her?

  Say it plainly, Miranda, or say it again.

  Wasn’t that plain enough?

  Then say it again.

  The words we’d spoken were sufficiently vague for us not to know what the other meant or what we ourselves meant, yet we both immediately sensed, without knowing why, that we’d seized the other’s underlying meaning precisely because it wasn’t spoken.

  Right then I had a splendid idea. I took out my cell phone and asked if she had anything to do for the next two to three hours.

  “I’m free,” she replied, “but don’t you have things to do, notes to go over, clothes to hang up, to say nothing of those hands you needed to wash?”

  I didn’t have time to explain and right away called a friend who was a well-known archaeologist in Rome. When he picked up, I said, “I need a favor, and I need it today.”

  “I’m very well, and thank you for asking,” he replied with his usual humor. “So how can I help?”

  “I need permission for two to visit Villa Albani.”

  He hesitated a moment. “Is she beautiful?” he asked.

  “Totally.”

  “I’ve never been inside Villa Albani,” she said. “They never let anyone in.”

  “You’ll see.” Then, as I waited for his call back: “Cardinal Albani built his villa in the eighteenth century and amassed a huge collection of Roman statues under the care of Winckelmann, and I want you to see them.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, you fed me fish and walnuts, and you love statues, so I’ll show you the most beautiful bas-relief you’ll see in your life. It’s of Antinoüs, Emperor Hadrian’s lover. Then I’ll show you my favorite—a statue of Apollo killing a lizard, attributed to Praxiteles, possibly the greatest sculptor of all time.”

  “And my cup of coffee?”

  “We have plenty of time.”

  My phone rang. Could we be at the villa within the hour? The visit would last no longer than an hour because the custodian needed to leave early. “It’s Friday,” explained my friend.

  We found a cab waiting right off the bridge and in seconds were racing to the villa. In the cab she turned to me. “What made you want to do this?”

  “My way of showing that I am happy I listened to you.”

  “Despite your grumbling?”

  “Despite my grumbling.”

  She said nothing, looked out for a short moment, then turned back to me.

  “You surprise me.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t expect you to be the kind who jumps on impulse from one thing to the next.”

  “Why?”

  “Because there’s something so thoughtful, calming, even-tempered about you.”

  “You mean dull.”

  “Not at all. People trust you and want to open up to you, maybe because they like who they are when they’re with you—like right now in this cab.”

  I reached out, held her hand, then let it go.

  We arrived in less than twenty minutes. The custodian had been warned of our arrival and was waiting outside the small gate with his arms crossed, almost peremptory and hostile. He eventually recognized me and his attitude, mistrusting at first, changed to one of guarded respect. We entered the villa itself and headed upstairs and proceeded through a series of chambers until we stood facing the statue of Apollo. “It’s called the Sauroktonos, killer of snakes. We’ll walk through the gallery and, if there’s time, see the Etruscan panels.”

  She stared at it, said she was sure she’d seen a copy of the statue before, but not that one.

  We rushed through the rest until we got to the Antinoüs. She couldn’t have been more struck by its beauty. “It’s amazing.”

  “What did I tell you?”

  “Sono senza parole,” she said. I’m without words right now.

  Both of us were. She put her arm around me, stared for a while, then rubbed my back once. Then we moved away.

  A short while later I turned to her and, pointing to a small bust of a hunchback, whispered in her ear that she could sneak a few pictures with her tiny camera if I managed to distract the guard, as no one was allowed to take photos. I remembered that he’d once opened up to me about his sick mother, so taking him aside, I asked how his mother had handled her operation. The question was meant to suggest delicatezza as I was asking it sotto voce allegedly so Miranda wouldn’t hear. He appreciated my discretion and explained that purtroppo era mancata. I gave him
my sympathies and to detain him a while longer and make certain that his back was turned to Miranda, explained that my mother too had died. “We’re given one only,” he said. We nodded and commiserated.

  Back to the Sauroktonos for one last look, I explained that the same statue was in the Louvre and in the Vatican Museums, but this and the one in Cleveland were the only ones in bronze. “But this one is not life-size,” said the guard. “Cleveland’s, I’m told, is more beautiful.”

  “It is,” I said.

  Then he encouraged us to walk through the Italian garden that led to another gallery filled with statues. At one point in the garden, we turned around to take in the façade and magnificent arcade of the large neoclassical palazzo, once deemed the most beautiful of its day.

  “I think we won’t have time to see the Etruscan panels,” he added, “but in compenso maybe the signorina might wish to take a few pictures of these statues, seeing,” he added with a mischievous, smug smile, “she likes taking pictures.” We all smiled at one another. He led us through the garden then to the exit gates, pointing to what he claimed were the seven oldest pine trees in Rome. As he pressed the button to open the electric gate, an elderly gentleman standing on the sidewalk stared at us and couldn’t help saying to the guard, “My family has lived in Rome for seven generations, yet never once has any of us been allowed into this villa.” The guard put on his peremptory gaze again and told him it was vietato, forbidden, to let anyone in. The gate closed behind us.

  Before hailing a cab, she said she wanted to take another picture of me by the gate.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “No reason.”

  Then, seeing I looked mopey, “Could you kill that frown?” she said. But then, reacting to my smile: “And not a fake Hollywood smile—please!”

  She snapped a few photos. But she wasn’t happy. “Why did you frown?”

  I didn’t know why I had, I said. But I did know.

  “Yet this morning you’re the one who accused me of being glum!”

  We laughed.

  She did not seem to expect a comment from me. Nor did I push her to explain. But as she kept clicking away, a troubling awareness began to creep up on me: someday, this would be a vigil too and it would be called Kill the frown! There was something warm, lambent, and intimate each time she elbowed me this way. She reminded me of someone who storms into your life, just as she’d done in her father’s living room, and right away fluffs your pillows, tears open the windows, straightens two old paintings you’ve stopped seeing though they’d never budged from your mantelpiece for years, and with a deft foot flattens the ripples on an ancient rug, only to remind you, once she’s added flowers to a vase that’s been standing empty for ever so long that, in case you were still struggling to downplay her presence, you wouldn’t dare ask for more than a week, a day, an hour of this. How close had I come to someone so real, I thought. How close.

  Was it too late?

  Am I too late?

  “Stop thinking,” she said.

  I reached out and held her hand.

  * * *

  In the swanky, crowded Caffè Trilussa that she liked we found a small, rickety square table and sat facing each other. Behind her stood one of those outdoor heaters going full blast. She liked the heat, she said, adding how strange it was that just a few hours earlier it had been warm enough to eat on her father’s terrace. Now she wanted something warm to drink. When the waiter came, she ordered two double Americanos.

  What’s an Americano, I was going to ask, but caught myself and decided not to. It took me a few moments to realize why I hadn’t asked.

  “An Americano is when they add hot water to a cup of espresso. A double Americano is hot water and two shots of espresso.”

  She lowered her gaze and looked down at the table trying to stifle a smile.

  “How could you tell I didn’t know what an Americano was?”

  “I just knew.”

  “I just knew,” I repeated.

  I loved this. I think we both did.

  “Is it because your father wouldn’t know, so you figured I wouldn’t either?”

  “Wrong!” she said, immediately guessing why I’d asked. “That’s not why at all, mister. I already told you.”

  “Then why?”

  Suddenly, the jeering smile vanished from her face.

  “I know you, Sami, that’s why. I look at you now, and it’s as if I’ve known you forever. And here’s one more thing, since we’re on the subject and I’m the one doing all the talking.”

  Where was she headed with this?

  “I don’t want to stop knowing you. So there’s the long and the short of it.”

  I looked at her once again, still uncertain what all this added up to. Just don’t make me hope, Miranda, don’t. I didn’t even want to raise the subject with her because that would be hoping too.

  The waiter brought us two cups.

  “An Americano,” she said, adopting the playful tone of moments before, “is for people who want an espresso but like American coffee. Or it’s for people who just want an espresso that lasts a long time—”

  “Go back to what you were saying before,” I interrupted.

  “What was I saying?” She was teasing. “That I’ve known you forever? Or that I don’t want to stop knowing you? The two go together.”

  When had all of this happened? In the train, in the taxi, in her father’s apartment, the kitchen, the living room, outside Villa Albani, when we spoke of Miss Margutta, or passed by my old home? Why did I feel she kept throwing me off course when part of me knew she wasn’t doing it at all?

  She must have known what I felt; it should have been clear from the very start to a child of six. But in Miranda, when? A few whimsical minutes ago that could so easily wilt no sooner than I’d mistake them for real? And then the thought struck again. Years ago, in a building not three blocks from here, I was reading Byzantine scholiasts, lost in the world of pre-Islamic Constantinople, yet the sperm cell from her pa’s gonads that would become Miranda hadn’t even been released. I stared at her. She gave a forced, diffident smile that didn’t sit with the jaunty, willful, unbending girl who knew all about Americanos. I could have asked her, What’s the matter? But I resisted. All she did at the end of an uncomfortable pause when neither of us said anything was to shake her head slightly, as though disagreeing with herself and dismissing a silly notion that she knew better than to confide. I’d already seen her do this the moment she sat across from me on the train. Now she looked down at her coffee cup. Her silence unsettled me.

  We were staring at each other, and yet neither of us was saying anything. I knew that if I uttered another word I would break the spell, so we sat there, silent and staring, silent and staring, as if she too did not want to lift the spell. I wanted to ask, What are you doing in my life? And do people so young and beautiful really exist? Are they even real outside films and magazines?

  And suddenly the Ancient Greek verb ὀψίζω, opsizo, raced through my mind. I tried to resist telling her, but then I couldn’t help myself. I explained that opsizo meant to arrive too late to the feast, or just before last call, or to feast today with the weight of all the wasted yesteryears.

  “And your point is?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Exactly.”

  She nudged me, meaning Don’t go there! Then she pointed to a woman who’d been sitting by herself at another table. “She keeps staring at you.” I didn’t believe her but I liked the idea. Another person was struggling with the crossword puzzle. “She’s not making good progress,” said Miranda. “Maybe I should help her with a hint; I finished mine this morning at the station. And by the way, that other one looked at you again, four o’clock, to your right.”

  “Why is it that I never notice these things?”

  “Maybe because you’re not a present-tense kind of person. This, for instance, is the present tense,” she said, reaching over and kissing me on the lips. It was not a full kis
s, but it lingered and she let her tongue touch my lips. “And you smell good,” she said.

  Okay, I am fourteen now, I thought.

  * * *

  Later, while giving my audience a harrowing description of the sack of Constantinople by the Ottomans, I recalled how she’d held my hand as we threaded our way through the narrow streets of Trastevere, as though she were scared to lose me in the crowd, when it was I who feared she might any moment be the one to drop my hand and slink away. And I thought of how she burrowed into my arms when I finally held her when we’d stepped outside Caffè Trilussa and how she’d placed both fists against my chest as though struggling against my hug and pushing me away when I realized it was just her way of folding into me before I let myself go and kissed her. I hadn’t kissed a woman in so very long, and certainly not with so much passion and I was about to tell her so, when she simply said, “Keep holding me, just keep holding me, Sami, and kiss me.”

  What a woman.

  And as I was still going on and on about the unimaginable loss of so many works in Photius’s catalogue of books, I was saving the best of our duet for last. “I know one thing,” I’d told her. “What?” “Come stay with me. I have a house by the sea.” The thought had just come to me as we were talking and I had sprung it on her without even thinking. I’d never said anything remotely like this in my life. Her reply was more startling and disarming than what I’d just said.

  “My friends would find this hysterical and think, Miranda’s lost her mind.”

  “I know. But do you want to?”

  “Yes.”

  Then, in what first appeared to be a second thought on her part: “For how long?” And this too I’d never said before but I knew I meant every word: “For as long as you want, for as long as you live.” We laughed. We laughed because neither of us believed the other was serious. I laughed because I knew I was.

  And then, without losing my train of thought as I kept addressing the audience about the books that mankind had lost forever, I imagined how she’d look with her face all flushed and, with her bare knees parted, how she’d guide me with the same hand I’d held and that one day soon would taste of brine after swimming in the Tyrrhenian Sea minutes before noon every day.