Vendela Vida - The Diver's Clothes Lie Empty

You approach the parking lot and see the police waiting by your tour bus. In front of the bus are three vans — the ones belonging to the press pool. You see the Swiss man boarding the middle van. Holding your camera in front of you, you get on after him. The driver turns to look at you. “She was in the other van,” the Swisss man says. “I think she enjoyed shopping the souks!” The driver nods. The Swiss man smiles at you, gently, as though to imply Don’t worry, you owe me nothing. And you believe him.

The other passengers in the van barely turn to look at you. They are busy discussing what they had for lunch. You overhear mention about the next day’s flight from Rabat to Cairo. You sit quietly in your seat, listening to how loud your heart is beating, as you wait for it to slow down, to adapt.

The van doors close and the driver starts the engine. You pass by the tour bus, and the police, who are standing outside the bus, waiting for the missing woman who’s been found. They are waiting for you.

As the van begins its drive out of Meknes, you see an intricate keyhole-shaped arch that leads into the ruins of what was once the royal palace. The arch is decorated with glazed blue, green, and red earthenware mosaics in the form of stars and rosettes. You watch as one woman enters through the arch, and another exits. You snap a photo, the first one of many you will take with this new camera, someone else’s camera.

Now that you are past the tour bus and the police, your heartbeat has adjusted and normalized. You look down at your outfit — your blue and white djellaba, your orange slippers. You never dress so brightly. You think of the redheaded bodyguard and how he spoke of that blue and orange species of bird and its radical evolution. Was that what he’d called it? You pull off the hood of your blue djellaba. Out the window, you see wide fields of sunflowers, their golden-yellow heads rising up like periscopes above an ocean of green.

A Spanish woman in the passenger seat of the van, whose name you’ve made out to be Paloma, is searching for a good song on the radio. She gives up and inserts a CD and you hear:

Looking out on the morning rain

I used to feel so uninspired

And when I knew I had to face another day

Lord, it made me feel so tired

When the chorus comes on she promptly turns it off and the women in the van go mute and listen to all the men belt out “You make me feel like a natural woman.” Paloma turns around and gives you, the closest woman to where she’s sitting, a wide smile. You laugh.

The Swiss man laughs too, even though he was singing the lyrics the loudest. He turns toward you. The afternoon sun is flooding the van with golden light now, and he shields his eyes to see you. “I don’t think we were really properly introduced,” he says.

You look at him — his eyes have a flash of lavender in them. Others on the van are now waiting for your name too. For a moment you consider giving them your real name, but you’re not ready. So you think of beautiful names — Verity, Maya, Honorée. No, no. You’ll save those for when you have a daughter of your own. For now, you look into the sun and you smile. “It’s funny this song is playing,” you tell them. “My name is actually Aretha.”

Thank you to my editor and publisher, Dan Halpern, and to Gabriella Doob, Allison Saltzman, Craig Young, Sonya Cheuse, Ashley Garland, Stephanie Vallejo, Martin Karlow, Bridget Read, and everyone else at Ecco. Thank you to Karen Duffy and everyone at Atlantic Books, and to Iris Tupholme at HarperCollins Canada.

Thank you to Mary Evans, and to Julia Kardon and Mary Guale at Mary Evans, Inc., and to Felicity Rubenstein at Lutyens & Rubinstein, and Lindsay Williams at the Gotham Group.

I’m grateful to Adrian Tomine, for the beautiful cover, and to early readers of this manuscript for their edits and insights: Heidi Julavits, Sheila Heti, Sarah Stewart Taylor, Lisa Michaels, Sarah Stone, Ann Packer, Ron Nyren, Cornelia Nixon, Ann Cummins, Clara Sankey, and Em-J Staples.

Thank you to Andi Winette, Andrew Leland, Ross Simonini, Karolina Waclawiak, Dominic Luxford, and everyone at The Believer magazine.

A book cannot be written, let alone conceived of, without the immeasurable gift of time. As always, I am forever indebted to those who have allowed for those elusive and essential hours and days: my parents, Paul and Inger, my sister, Vanessa and her family, my own young children, and, especially, Dave.

VENDELA VIDAis the award-winning author of four books, including Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name and The Lovers, and a founding editor of The Believer magazine. She is also the coeditor of Always Apprentices, a collection of interviews with writers, and Confidence, or the Appearance of Confidence, a collection of interviews with musicians. As a fellow at the Sundance Labs, she developed Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name into a script, which received the Sundance Institute/Mahindra Global Filmmaking Award. Two of Vida’s novels have been New York Times Notable Books of the Year, and she is the winner of the Kate Chopin Award, given to a writer whose female protagonist chooses an unconventional path. She lives in Northern California with her husband and two children, and since 2002 has served on the board of 826 Valencia, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center for youth.

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