Rivka Galchen - Atmospheric Disturbances

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When Dr. Leo Liebenstein’s wife disappears, she leaves behind a single, confounding clue: a woman who looks, talks, and behaves exactly like her — or
exactly like her — and even audaciously claims to be her. While everyone else is fooled by this imposter, Leo knows better than to trust his senses in matters of the heart. Certain that the original Rema is alive and in hiding, Leo embarks on a quixotic journey to reclaim his lost love.
With the help of his psychiatric patient Harvey — who believes himself to be a secret agent who can control the weather — Leo attempts to unravel the mystery of the spousal switch. His investigation leads him to the enigmatic guidance of the meteorologist Dr. Tzvi Gal-Chen, the secret workings of the Royal Academy of Meteorology in their cosmic conflict with the 49 Quantum Fathers, and the unwelcome conviction that somehow he — or maybe his wife, or maybe even Harvey — lies at the center of all these unfathomables. From the streets of New York to the southernmost reaches of Patagonia, Leo’s erratic quest becomes a test of how far he is willing to take his struggle against the seemingly uncontestable truth he knows in his heart to be false.
Atmospheric Disturbances

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Again the dog’s nostrils flared.

And I found myself saying to this other Rema, calling out to her across the apartment — and this too felt like clichéd speech that had infected me — that I wanted to tell her the whole truth .

“Okay,” she said, returning her gaze to me.

So laconic. It was details like that that made it clear to me that I was not speaking with my Rema. But even so, the doppelganger, she had a wintry kind of pretty about her that day, chapped and rosy like freshly sanded wood. Even if she wasn’t my wife, I still felt sorry for her. My heart always goes out to beautiful people, which I realize really isn’t fair, but at least my heart goes somewhere. And at least, unlike the previous day, I did not feel that I wanted to hold the impostress, though I was surprised and perhaps a little offended that she didn’t — even as a kind of ploy — try to seduce me. But once I realized that I didn’t want to hold her, I realized that I had nothing further to say. She was still waiting for my promised explication. But I did not know what “the whole truth” was. I cast about for an explanation with the sense that it would arrive whole , entire, like a forgotten memorized poem, if only I could recall the first word or two. Again like my sincere belief in my nonexistent German. But I couldn’t find my way out of the crisscrossing thought: either I tell her she’s not really Rema and she thinks I’m crazy, or I tell her she’s not really Rema and she doesn’t think I’m crazy, because she already knows she’s not Rema, in which case why should I let on that I know? Those weren’t really the only two options, logically speaking, but I got caught within that syllogism, like in the still place inside of storms.

“You aren’t speaking?” she asked.

Even though the vein on this woman’s forehead had not been prominent before, it became ghostly blue prominent. Like her maybe lover’s, the night nurse’s.

Then the phone rang.

14. Pleasures past

The first time I actually spoke to Rema: she was again sitting right in front of me at the Hungarian Pastry Shop, and I had leaned forward toward that hair, and I actually tapped her shoulder, but then what was I going to say if she turned around? I had no plan.

She did indeed turn around in her chair, her profile showing off her long, gently fluted nose and the tendons on her neck.

I found myself asking her if she was Hungarian.

During the silence of indeterminate length that followed I fixed my gaze upon her forehead, since I couldn’t possibly look straight into her eyes, and what I eventually heard, in a lilting long-voweled accent, was: Why do you stare at me?

Over the sound of milk being steamed I asked, alarmed, “Do I stare at you?”

You are from Hungary?” came from her, now in a louder voice, to the sound of silverware being sorted.

“No, no.”

“Oh.”

“Though my mother. Actually.”

“Oh?”

“But no. Not me. A mistake.”

“A mistake.”

“Do you make these cakes here?” shouted a surprisingly tiny woman across the nearby counter.

And I remember it striking me then (as my mishearing had nearly become conversation) how in my line of work the fact that I sometimes can’t hear so well — I just have trouble disarticulating sounds — is almost a plus, since people give out so many clues about what’s ailing them that are so much more important than the actual words they say. But in all other aspects of my life this “quality” left me fairly crippled.

“So where are you from?” I asked, and somehow our conversation hobbled on from there. I don’t know why she was so willing to talk to me; she had not been in the country for long at that time and I believe she must have felt alone, and Rema does not luxuriate in feelings of aloneness, and she tends to be kind of catholic in her interest in people, at least for a little while.

“Really?” Rema said when the fact that I am a psychiatrist came out. “Did you know that Argentina has more psychoanalysts per person than has any other country?”

I did already know that fact about Argentina, about its psychoanalysts, but I said:

“No, I didn’t know that. That’s so interesting.” Also: normally people’s conflation of psychoanalysis with psychiatry irritates me profoundly — I could never be an analyst, those people are too unpleasant, too passive-aggressively authoritarian, and, yes, all crazy, and out of fashion to boot — but when Rema conflated the two, I was not irritated.

“And the south side of Buenos Aires — it is the inconsciente,” Rema explained. “Or so they will tell you, no? You see there is Avenida Rivadavia, and it cuts the city, the north from the south. When the streets cross Rivadavia, their names change. From north to south, Esmeralda becomes Piedras, and Reconquista becomes La Defensa, and Florida becomes Peru. That is cute, no?” She brushed unseen hairs off of her face.

She had a somewhat manic speech pattern, with increased rate and rhythm, though not volume. Also her hair was cowlicked at her temple. Looking at her I had the urge to tell her what I often feel impelled to tell a beautiful person, which was that she really didn’t need to say anything at all, and that she shouldn’t worry, and that it is not just me who will be helplessly devoted to her regardless of what she says. But I didn’t tell Rema that. Pretty people often actually don’t like to hear that kind of thing, I’ve found.

“And even the whole of Argentina,” she went on, “it is the geography of a mind. Patagonia, in the south, is the savage and inhospitable inconsciente. Or so people say. And on a small scale, like snow globe, my neighborhood in Buenos Aires, it is named Villa Freud.” She smiled at me. “You must think this is very silly what I am saying.” Then she looked down at her napkin, which she began folding into triangles. “I also think it is very silly; maybe it is thinking like that that made me want to leave. Everyone so interested in how they are feeling, and who they maybe really are; even the newspapers, they print passages from psychoanalysis.” Then: “Have you been? To Argentina?”

I told Rema the truth, that I had not been. I thought about saying something about Borges, but I know that I have a problem with coming off as pretentious, and I was worried that bringing up Borges might appear showy, even though every introverted schoolboy reads Borges, so it’s rather ambiguous what such a reference would or should indicate. Another reason I generally don’t like to mention Borges is because often a response will be to the effect of he has no emotion , and I hate hearing that said, because it is so wrong, and it’s not a discussion that I like to get into. In retrospect I know that Rema would have agreed with me, but back then, I wanted to protect Rema from saying anything that might make me not like her.

“If the Argentines are generally like you, then it must be a lovely country,” I said, immediately regretting my banality.

“You will have to go,” she said firmly.

“Oh I apologize for troubling you,” I said.

“Yes, you will have to go to Argentina. Unfortunately I can’t go myself now, they might not let me back here, you know? What is that: what is easy to get into, easy to get out of, but almost impossible to return to? It is some very big answer, I think, something like life, or love. Something silly like that. For me, it’s this country.”

The way her bangs were parted made me think of an ink brush.

картинка 4

We never went to Argentina together, Rema and I — or, not really. Thinking of that now, I can’t help but wonder if Rema had hid Argentina away from me intentionally, like some token from another lover. But Rema wouldn’t try to hide an entire country. She hid much smaller things. I’m thinking about the time we went to have a slice of pizza together. It was like this: just in front of that mural of deformed angels, the mural at the pastry shop, Rema and I decided to get a bite to eat. And she said, well where should we go? And I, not wanting to look as if I were trying to impress, and not wanting to seem as old as I am, said, well we could go to Koronet for pizza, to which she said, sure, I’m happy with anything. Which I’ve always taken to mean the opposite. And indeed it did mean the opposite. She stopped then a moment — that day she was wearing a yellow jumper with a navy blue cardigan, she looked like an airline stewardess on some small Eastern European line — and said, oh I don’t want to eat there, can we eat elsewhere? And I said that we could have a slice at the Pinnacle — but she said that she didn’t like that pizza — or at the Famiglia — which also she said she didn’t like, that the crust was so thick, and the cheese “unhappy,” and she added, “Oh I’m sorry, you see I said I’m happy with anything when actually the opposite is true, I’m never satisfied.” I blushed and shrugged my shoulders. Indecisiveness, capriciousness — these qualities in Rema never irritated me. I’ve always thought of my own mind as an unruly parliament, with a feeble leader, with crazy extremist factions, and so I don’t look down on others for being the same. Maybe that’s what “our humanity” means. My mother was like this also: often she’d run bathwater, set the kettle for tea, and go out for a walk nearly all at once, and when she did this it was usually I who had to stop the bathwater’s running, turn off the kettle before the whistle blew. So Rema and I stopped there a moment on the sidewalk, and stood silent, and then Rema said, “Yes, let’s go to Koronet. I do like it there. I just can’t ever finish the slice and then I feel I am wasting and I feel sometimes a little bit sad — that is silly, no? — but I am very hungry tonight, I am sure I will finish, and the crust is nice and thin and I like the people that work there.”

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