André Aciman - Harvard Square

In fact, Kalaj never asked, and I never explained what Master’s Tea was, but it was a weekly reception that I happened to like because there were always people I enjoyed meeting and chatting with. It was, it occurred to me, the exact opposite of Café Algiers, a touch ceremonial, quite Anglo, yet never stuffy.

He said he had a few minutes to kill before picking up his girlfriend and the boy; they were going for a picnic at Walden Pond with a Romanian au pair and the boy she babysat. Did I want to join? I thought about it for a while, wondering all along if it wasn’t going to be a bit cold for swimming. But then, it was an intensely sunny day and I had already removed my jacket and was indeed sweating. Kalaj was wearing a T-shirt only. He too had removed his jacket.

“I’ll come,” I said, “but I have to be back at Lowell House in time for dinner.”

When I explained that as a tutor I was given free meals at Lowell House he almost fell from his seat. “Free food, for an entire year!” he said, amazed at the munificence of American institutions. “What’s the catch?” There was no catch, I said, just sit and talk with students. I told him that I was hoping to be appointed a resident tutor the coming February, which could mean that the same institution would throw in not just food but two free rooms for what amounted to mere talking. “If they’re willing to give you room and board just for yaking with strangers — and, let’s face it, you and casual chitchat aren’t good together — what would they give me, then? Harvard Square? Boston? The world?”

We stopped the cab to pick up Léonie and her boy, and a few blocks farther down stopped by a private house on Highland Avenue where Ekaterina, the Romanian au pair, and her five-year-old ward were waiting for us. The women had brought wine, cheeses, lots of food — French country style. The two boys wanted to sit on the old jump seats, but Kalaj said the seats were unsteady and dangerous. On our way, I asked him to stop at one of the supermarkets and, five minutes later, returned with a huge watermelon that made everyone crack up laughing. “And how do you plan to cut this giant gourd? With karate chops?” he asked. I’d thought of everything, I said, and produced a super-cheap Japanese steak knife that I’d seen advertised time and again on television. Everyone was overjoyed.

Kalaj decided to take the scenic route to Walden Pond. On the way, we couldn’t agree which song to sing together because no one knew the songs the other wanted to sing. The only songs we all knew, including Ekaterina who had learned them from her parents in Romania, were French songs from our parents’ generation. So we started with these, and in the Checker cab headed to Walden Pond, here we all were, like two couples with their children headed for a Sunday picnic in July somewhere in the French countryside, singing Aznavour, Brel, and Bécaud songs, which the younger ones mimicked, just as all four of us had mimicked them in our childhood. Everything seemed right with us. It was a Monday, not a Sunday, and it was October, not July, and this was Massachusetts, not Provence. Details!

No one knew what Walden Pond was famous for. I didn’t want to break the spell by playing Mister Learned Professor. But I couldn’t resist telling everyone there used to be a time when investors would harvest the iced water of Walden Pond and ship it to India.

“You mean to the Indians of Arizona.”

“No, to Indians of the Ganges.”

Kalaj was totally nonplussed. “But that would be like selling sand to the Arabs,” he added, “or ice to Eskimos, or cloth to your people.” We all burst out laughing.

When we arrived, we parked the cab in a sodden, narrow alleyway in between a row of trees. We got out, took off our shoes, rolled up our pants. Not a soul in sight. The pond was entirely ours. “So what does one do here?” Kalaj finally asked, already feeling awkward.

“You swim. You picnic. You relax.”

Kalaj refused to swim. Too cold, he said. Plus he didn’t want to change. Then he looked around and said, “Tall cypresses and bathing water. They don’t mix for me.” He began describing Sidi Bou Saïd, just south of Pantelleria. Now there was a heavenly spot! “One day, we’ll all have to go there, you, me, the children. And all our friends.”

On second thought, it was peaceful here. The air felt clean, he said, and there were no people, and he liked walking along the shore on bare feet. And yet, as though catching himself, Tout ça ne me dit absolument rien, all this means absolutely nothing to me, he added once he spotted row upon row of thick, drooping tuft fringing the water, every clump of trees already looking glum, autumnal, and bereaved. This was no beach.

He played with the children. Then he said he’d take care of cutting the watermelon. It took him back to his catering days. “Is the water cold?” he asked.

“No, you can swim in your undies if you want,” said his girlfriend.

“And what do I wear afterward?”

“You’ll find something. You’ll wear your trousers only. Or swim naked.”

“He’s really a prude, didn’t you know,” said Léonie.

The babysitter Ekaterina took out a large tablecloth and laid it out on the grass and asked Léonie to watch her boy. She had, it took me a moment to realize, the awkward, boyish walk of dancers, a sort of flaunted waddle that was not unattractive to look at. Then she leaned down with her back completely straight, spread her thighs on bended knees, and began to undress. To my surprise, underneath her shirt, her bra, and blue jeans she wore no bathing suit at all. She was getting naked. “I’m going for a swim. Coming?” I said yes before realizing that what she meant was completely naked. I liked the way she waddled into the water, noticing for the first time that with her dancer’s walk came the perfect legs of a dancer. I took off everything and jumped in after her, not realizing that the water was freezing. “This is the most wonderful place in the world,” she said as we treaded water away from the others, “even if it’s totally American.”

“You’re starting to sound like him,” I said.

“Jumbo-ersatz, jumbo-ersatz,” she began to mimic, pointing her wet index finger at me in an imitation machine gun, rat-tat-tat, rat-tat-tat . We laughed out loud: “The water is ersatz, the plants are ersatz, even the fish are ersatz — there are no fish. I hate fish.” We both took turns imitating his rants when he harangued the human race and damned every man, woman, species, child, fish, tree, vegetable, mineral, rat-tat-tat . To imitate her final round of bullets she splashed me in the face, once, twice, three times.

We swam farther out where the water felt yet more chilly. Then we swam underwater, came up to breathe, then back under again. I hadn’t swum naked in years. Eventually, we saw people on one of the shores and decided to swim back. “Turn around, everyone,” she said as we came rushing out of the water. “You too, iepuraşul meu , my bunny,” she said to the five-year-old who couldn’t help staring, as I couldn’t help staring at her legs, wondering all along whether God had made her thighs or whether they were the product of some strict Eastern European ballet school regimen. “And don’t stare,” she said. Even her cagey bantering felt familiar, warm, intimate, as though something of hers had touched my hand and then held it and didn’t mean to let go. I wondered if this was because we were all speaking in French or just simply because Kalaj, as usual and without knowing it, had been stoking everyone’s libido and we were all playing by his rules, where contact among humans was easy, natural, untrammeled, and necessary. Or maybe, in the end, we were all four of us truly happy to be together and no longer felt like stranded members of a disbanded company who’d given up on themselves in a Lotusland called Cambridge. The pond wasn’t exactly ours to claim, but it let us play there, the way an empty tennis court can be yours for a day when the owners are out of town. Mild-mannered poachers trying to catch a few hours in the sun, not rogues or squatters. We were borrowing America, not settling in. The diffidence and haste with which we kept throwing the watermelon rinds in plastic bags so as not to attract bees or litter the grounds told everyone we were determined to keep a low profile. I said nothing, but I realized I was the only one among them who had a green card. Léonie plopped herself right next to Kalaj, and they embraced.