Find Me

by André Aciman

  But then, perhaps to give a hasty justification to our smiles, he said, “You come here for the music and I come for my father. He died almost thirty years ago, yet nothing changes here.” He chuckled. “Same cider, same odors, same old nuns, same stifling November evenings. Do you like November?”

  “Sometimes, but not always.”

  “Me neither. I don’t even like church, though perhaps I like to come here on evenings like this … and, well, me voici, here I am.” I could sense he was running out of things to say and was fumbling to keep our conversation going. Then silence. Again the warm, fetching smile, a blend of wisdom, irony, and just a dab of sadness to remind me that there was nothing light about this gentle, possibly unhappy man.

  When we saw the quartet shuffle back to their places and that it was time for the Beethoven, he asked where I was sitting. I didn’t understand why he was asking, but I pointed to the corner seat in one of the last pews where I’d left my backpack and jacket.

  “Chosen wisely.” He understood why. “But don’t slip away,” he added. I thought he was asking me to give the quartet another chance before opting for a hasty exit but I had already changed my mind after the Haydn and had no intention of leaving before the end of the concert. But then to clear the air I asked point-blank: “Do you want me to wait for you?” The inflection in my voice could have been all wrong. I sounded as though I were asking an older person if he’d need someone to hold the door for him while he struggled with his walker. So I repeated: “I’ll wait for you outside.”

  He didn’t say anything; he simply nodded. But his wasn’t a nod of affirmation, meaning yes; it was the pensive, distracted, wistful nod of someone who normally chooses not to believe a word he’s heard.

  “Yes, why not, wait for me,” he finally said. “And my name is Michel.” I told him my name. We shook hands.

  I was sure he was going to leave at the end of the first movement, but half an hour later we met on the steps of the church, just as we’d promised, except that I had a feeling he’d forgotten about our meeting. He was speaking with a couple, and all three seemed about to head out somewhere. But as soon as he saw me, he turned around, then hastily finished talking to them as they shook hands goodbye. He apologized for not introducing me. I was busy wrapping my scarf around my neck, which was my way of deflecting his apology. I caught myself trying to seem surprised he had waited or that he remembered we’d promised to meet. Or had he perhaps waited simply to say goodbye once more before we went our separate ways?

  Instead, he suggested we go for a little something at a small bistro not too far across the bridge. I told him I had locked my folding bike nearby. Did he mind if I unlocked it and walked with it? Not at all. It was around ten on a Sunday evening, and the streets were largely empty. “And you are my guest,” he added, to reassure me that money should not be a concern. I accepted. I liked the walk, especially as it had rained during the concert and the cobblestones glinted under the streetlights. “Just like a Brassaï photo,” I said. “Yes, isn’t it,” he added. “And what do you do besides play the piano?”

  I noticed that he tended to start some sentences with the word and, perhaps to smooth out the jolting or missing transition between unrelated subjects, especially when broaching something slightly more probing, more personal. I told him I taught at the conservatory. Did I like teaching? Very much. Then I said that once a week I also played gratis and for the fun of it at a piano bar in a luxury hotel. He didn’t ask the name of the hotel. Tactful, I thought, or just his way of showing he wasn’t the sort who prods or cares.

  When we arrived at the bridge, we spotted two Brazilian performers, a man and a woman, singing to a large group who’d gathered around them. The man’s voice was high, the woman’s raucous. Together they sang beautifully. I stopped walking the bike and stood a moment, one hand holding the handlebar. He stood there as well, holding the other end of the handlebar, as if he were helping me steady the bike. I could tell he felt slightly awkward. When the young singers ended their song, everyone on the bridge clapped and cheered, while the two singers immediately launched into another duet. I wanted to hear part of the second song and wasn’t budging, but soon after they had begun singing we decided to walk away and, once on the opposite bank, heard the crowd clapping when the singers were done. He saw me turn around, then turned himself to watch the male singer put down his guitar, while she began sauntering through the crowd, cap in hand. Did I recognize the song, he asked. Yes, I said. Did he? “Maybe, I think so.” But I could tell he had no idea, just as he seemed out of his element listening to Brazilian music played on a bridge, of all places.

  “It’s about a man who comes back home from work and asks his beloved to get dressed and come outside and dance with him. There is such an eruption of joy on their street that eventually the whole city bursts with joy.”

  “Nice song,” he said. I wanted him to feel less ill at ease and for a few seconds clasped his shoulder.

  But he was totally at home once he opened the door to his bistro. The place was indeed small, just as he had said, but it also looked very exclusive. I should have known. His navy Forestière jacket, the large, flowing printed scarf, and the Corthay shoes were dead giveaways. Our little snack turned out to be a three-course dinner. He ordered a single malt, Caol Ila was his favorite, he said. He asked if I wanted one. I said yes but had no idea what a single malt was. I could tell he’d seen through this, perhaps had seen it many times. I liked his manner, but it left me feeling uneasy. He explained the menu. “Not too many meats here,” he said. “But their wine cellar is good, and I like how they cook vegetables. Fish is also very good.” He shut the menu no sooner than he’d opened it. “I always order the same thing, so I don’t even bother to look.” He waited for me to decide what I wanted. I couldn’t decide. Then I did something that came to me totally impulsively. “Order for me,” I said. I loved the idea, and it seemed he loved it too. “Easily done. I’ll order what I always have for you too.”

  He called the waiter and ordered. Then after sipping from his whiskey, he said that his father, who had introduced him to this restaurant, was also in the habit of ordering the same thing all the time. “He was diabetic,” he explained, “so I learned to avoid what diabetics shouldn’t eat. No sugars, no rice, no pasta, no bread, and seldom any butter.” As he said that, he was buttering and then sprinkling salt on the end of his small pain Poilâne roll, snickering as he brought it to his mouth. “I don’t always walk in my father’s footsteps, but his shadow is difficult to avoid. I am full of contradictions.”

  There was a pause. He went on about his father’s regimen, but I wanted to hear more about his contradictions, which interested me and which might have told me more about who this man was and how he saw himself. He seemed to waver between opening up or going on about food and dieting. There was even a moment of slight tension, as though we both sensed we were just making conversation and could easily get trapped in small talk. To get past the awkwardness, I told him about my two great-uncles, whom I’d never met but who had the reputation of being very savvy bakers and who had opened three bakeries in Milan only to be rounded up as socialists during the war. “They ended up in Birkenau. My mother frequently spoke about her uncles when I was growing up. They too, as in your father’s case, cast long shadows on my mother’s family.”

  “What kind of shadows?” he asked, not quite getting my point.

  “She bakes wonderful cakes.”

  He gave a hearty laugh. I was glad he got the joke. “But I know: some shadows never go away,” I added.

  “You’re right. My father’s shadow never left me. He died two years after I inherited his law practice. I was your age at the time.”

  But then he stopped short again and thought a while, as though he had seized an unforeseen link between what he’d just said and what, without my knowing, must have been pressing on his mind. “And you know that I’m almost twice your age.”

  This was when I blushed. It was a
tense and awkward moment, partly because he had broached a subject that felt totally premature and too close to what we were cautiously sidestepping, crossing t’s that weren’t even written out yet and should have remained silent, at least for a while longer. But his statement also left me feeling at a loss for what to say, and, as I rummaged for just the right words, the blush must have signaled my discomfort. Perhaps it was his way of bringing the subject out into the open and making me say something to allay his own anxieties. I struggled to banish our silence but couldn’t. Finally, “You don’t show your age at all,” I said, my attempt at an evasive response.

  “That is not what I meant” was his quick comeback.

  “I know what you meant.” And to show there was no misunderstanding between us: “I wouldn’t be sitting here with you, would I?” Was I blushing again? I hoped not. The silence that suddenly hovered between us did not displease him, and he nodded again, that same wistful and reflective nod, followed by a very mild shaking of the head, not of negation but of something bordering on disbelief and speechless wonderment at the way life simply plays along sometimes. “I didn’t mean to make things awkward for you.”

  He was apologizing.

  Or maybe not.

  It was my turn to shake my head.

  “No awkwardness at all,” I said. Then, after a short pause, “And now you’re the one blushing.”

  He pursed his lips. I reached for his hand across the table and held it for a moment in a friendly gesture, hoping he wouldn’t feel uneasy. He didn’t withdraw it.

  “You don’t believe in fate, do you?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never really thought about it.”

  It was the kind of talk that was not as oblique as I would have wished. I could sense where he was headed, and I didn’t mind the candor; but I didn’t need the matter discussed too broadly either. Perhaps he belonged to a generation that sought out what was a tad difficult to discuss, I to one where what’s obvious enough is left unstated. I was used to the totally direct approach that requires no words whatsoever, or just a glance or a hasty text. But shrouded, lingering speech left me unmoored.

  “So if it wasn’t fate, what brought you to the concert tonight?”

  He gave my question some thought, then, looking down and away from me, started drawing ridges on the tablecloth with the fork he hadn’t yet used. They looked like light furrows that made sudden squiggly turns around his bread plate. He was so taken by what had crossed his mind that I was sure he was no longer focusing on my question, which I welcomed, since on second thought I hoped he’d let go of our gingerly back-and-forth. But then he looked up at me and said that the answer to my question couldn’t be simpler.

  “What is it?” I asked, knowing he’d say something about his father.

  Instead he said, “You.”

  “Me?”

  He nodded. “Yes, you.”

  “But you didn’t know you’d meet me.”

  “A meaningless detail. Fate works forward, backward, and crisscrosses sideways and couldn’t care less how we scan its purposes with our rickety little befores and afters.”

  I took this in. “Too, too deep for me.” There was another moment of silence between us.

  “You see, my father believed in fate,” he went on.

  What a generous soul, I thought. He had sensed I wanted to skirt the subject and had deftly brought the conversation back to his father. But I wasn’t really listening—he could tell I wasn’t. Then he stopped. He was probably still debating how to broach the unspoken between us, which explains why he cast a lingering glance at me, then looked away. What totally surprised me, though, was what he said next as we stood up from our table and were about to leave. “Will I see you again? I would like to.”

  His question startled me. I muttered a feeble but all too hasty “Yes, of course.” My reply came so quickly that it must have sounded totally disingenuous. I had expected something far bolder than a goodbye from him.

  “But only if you want to,” he added.

  I stared at him. “You know I’d like to.” And this wasn’t the single malt or the wine speaking.

  He nodded his signature nod. He was not convinced. But not displeased.

  “Same church, same time next Sunday, then.”

  I did not venture to add anything more. So tonight was not in the cards, I thought.

  We were the very last to leave the restaurant. It was clear from the way the waiters were hovering that they were eager to close down the moment we stepped outside.

  On the sidewalk, we instinctively embraced. But it was a makeshift, clumsy hug that was more like a holding back than the prolonged cuddle I had hoped to find in his arms earlier on when we’d met during intermission. He was already softening his hold. Once again I felt an impulse to throw myself against him and put my arms around him and, though I held back, in the flurry of the moment, I ended up kissing him not on the cheek, but without meaning to, under both his ears. Definitely the single malt and the wine this time. I am sure he must have noticed. But I liked what I’d done. Then I thought twice about it. This was awkward, I thought. More awkward yet when I spotted the three waiters staring out the window from behind the parted muslin sheers. They knew him well and must have witnessed similar scenes many times before.

  He walked me to where I’d locked my bicycle, watched me unlock it, started a bit of small talk about the diminutive size of the bike, even said he’d thought of purchasing one just like it. But then, before withdrawing, he placed a lingering palm on my cheek—a gesture that completely threw me off and left me feeling shaken and overcome with emotion. It had caught me by surprise. I wanted us to kiss. Just kiss me, will you, if only to help me get over being so visibly flustered.

  I watched him pivot and walk away.

  You don’t do that and walk away, I thought, and so stiffly too. I wanted him to bring his other palm to my cheek and hold my face, hold my face and let me be the younger of the two, and then kiss me deep in the mouth. It felt as though we’d just been in bed together and he’d stopped talking to me and then simply vanished.

  The feeling stayed with me all night, and I kept waking in fits and starts. The night was still young and we could easily have gone elsewhere for another drink. I could have rushed after him and asked to offer him something at a café nearby—just to be together and not say goodbye so soon. Yet something held me back and eventually another voice in me reminded me that I was not exactly displeased by how the evening had turned out on the end of a long, dull Sunday when nothing remotely like this was planned. Perhaps he’d seen that sometimes it’s best to stop things when they’re perfect rather than race on and watch them sour.

  I walked my bike on this lovely November night: the deserted glinting cobblestones, the Brassaï effect we’d discussed, my clumsy kiss under his ears, and the matter about being almost half his age, all these buoyed my spirit and made me feel quite happy. Perhaps he’d understood things better than I ever could; and if he understood, then he knew something I was barely beginning to realize myself: that perhaps I wasn’t ready, any more than he was, not tonight, not tomorrow night, not even next week, which was when it finally dawned on me that he might not attend next Sunday’s concert, not because he didn’t want to but because he already sensed that, at the last minute next Sunday evening, I’d be the one who’d find a reason not to show up.

  * * *

  Two evenings later, I was just finishing a master class devoted to the last movement of Beethoven’s D Minor sonata when suddenly, at the door, there he was, standing with his hands in the pockets of his blue blazer, looking a touch gawky for such an elegant man, and yet not in the slightest bit uncomfortable. He held the door for the six or seven who were starting to leave the hall, and seeing they were filing out without holding the door or thanking him, he smiled broadly at them, finally thanking them for the tip. I must have been beaming. What a lovely way to surprise someone.

  “You’re not displease
d then?”

  I shook my head. Like you needed to ask.

  “What were you planning after class?”

  “I usually have coffee or a juice somewhere.”

  “Mind if I join?”

  “Mind if I join?” I mimicked.

  I took him to my favorite café where I go after teaching and where sometimes a colleague or a student joins me as we sit and watch people race along the sidewalks at this time of day—people on last-minute errands, others looking to put off heading home and shutting their door to the world, and then some just rushing from one corner of their lives to another. The tables around us were all filled with people, and for some reason that I’ve never been able to define, I like when everyone seems bunched together, almost elbow to elbow with strangers. “Are you really not displeased I came then?” he asked again. I smiled and shook my head. I told him I was still not recovered from the surprise.

  “Good surprise, then?”

  “Very good surprise.”

  “If I didn’t find you at the conservatory,” he said, “I was going to try every luxury hotel with a piano bar. Very simple.”