Olga Grushin - Forty Rooms

Another delusional royal, she thought with a quick flash of disdain—and then, surprising herself, opened her mouth and said, “ I am a poet,” and, flushed with instant embarrassment, hastened to add: “But I’m not yet published or anything.”

“Published? But poets are not published, Mrs. Caldwell. You do not put a song in a book. Being a jali is a gift you carry to the people. You walk among your people singing them alive, keeping their roots nourished, teaching them who they are. The word jali , do you know what it means in my language? Blood. Yes. That is what it means. Poets are the true blood of their people.” He was silent for a moment, a still look on his sculpted face, as though lost in some memory. (He was seeing the night settling in the clearing, and the drums beating and beating, and his father twirling in the circle of the dancers, their eyes shining darkly in the slits of horned and feathered masks, and the wisdom of past generations deep in his being like the slow flow of rich ancestral blood, a part of him forever. The world, he knew without ever putting it into words, was so much more wondrous than most people here ever suspected.) Then his lustrous eyes rolled over her, lit up with another smile. “But now I open the wall, so you go someplace with no death, it is no good for you here.”

She wanted to continue talking to him, but of course there could be no conversation while the animal (a squirrel, not a rat, as it turned out, much to her relief) was being extracted, and in any case, she realized with a start that Emma had been screaming in her crib for quite a while now; her ability to tune things out had become truly astonishing. Well, the drywall man will be coming in a day or two, she thought as she hurried down the corridor toward her daughter’s high-pitched wails. She wondered what he would be like, and felt a small thrill of anticipation.

When the trapper left, she gave him a sizable tip.

Her heart flipped like a fish when she answered the doorbell.

“Please, please, come in,” she said.

He stepped inside, a bouquet of nondescript flowers in his hand.

“Not gladioli, I see,” she said with a nervous little laugh. “You haven’t changed at all.”

Adam smiled with his lips only, glanced around the entrance hall.

“Nice place,” he said, his voice flat.

His jacket was shabby, she saw, and his shoes cheap.

“Oh, would you like a tour? I’ll ask Dolores to put these in water,” she said, and, flushing for no reason, abandoned the flowers on the marble-topped console and fled ahead of him without waiting for his reply. “Please, this way. Paul likes to show people around”—she spoke over her shoulder, not wanting to fall silent, not wanting to slow down—“but he won’t be back from work for another hour. I’m having the living room redone, do watch out—oh, sorry!”

He had barely avoided stepping into one of the pans of paint her contractor had left for her to review. As she maneuvered him into the ballroom, the telephone rang, and for an insufferable minute she tried and failed to extricate herself from a discussion of cushion upholstery with Felicity, her decorator, while his level gaze pursued her through the mirrors, judging her, judging her. In the kitchen, Gene was helping Emma with a puzzle, and Squash and Pepper tangled panting in their legs. “The enthusiasm puppies have for the world!” she said, laughing, and again saw Adam’s cheap shoes, and was all at once conscious that, deep underneath the awkwardness, she was almost enjoying this chaotic display of the full, prosperous life she had managed to build for herself out of nothing. Upstairs, in the nursery, she grew likewise conscious of the fact that she had once wondered about having children with the very man who was now commenting politely on Emma’s doodles framed above the cribs; it caused her to coo over the twins in a fussy manner not her own, which made Mrs. Simmons raise her eyebrows slightly. In the bedroom, she was conscious of other things yet. To avoid lingering by the enormous king-size bed, whose elaborate carved posts Dolores was brushing just then with a duster, she pulled him into the bathroom.

“Nice place,” he said again, in that same polite, flat tone. “Orchids and swans.”

Their eyes met, and a brief silence settled between them.

“Can you believe it,” she exclaimed wildly, desperate to dispel the hush, to say anything, anything at all, “these faucets are actual gold, isn’t that silly!”

Dolores crept in, a spray in her hand, her gaze cast down with disapproval, muttering, “Excuse me, ma’am”—probably hoping to spy on us, she thought in sudden agony. (Dolores did not notice the strained pauses in the conversation between her employer and her employer’s guest. She paid no attention to them whatsoever. She was thinking of the bells ringing in an ancient bell tower in her hometown, and of herself as a fifteen-year-old girl, and of the bell ringer’s son taking her night after night up the winding staircase of the tower, and the bells ringing within the stone walls, and the two of them holding hands as they rose higher and higher, past the bells, past the roof, until they were climbing the endless celestial ladder among the stars. One time, when the bell ringer’s son was not looking, she sneaked a small star into her pocket, and when her son was born nine months later, she gave it to him. She had not seen her son in twenty years, but she was sure she would always know him, for once you touched a star, you were marked for life.)

“Why don’t I show you the wine cellar next?” she offered brightly.

“Please,” he replied, his voice reserved.

On the stairs to the basement she paused, turned to glance up at him.

“But you haven’t changed at all,” she said again, hoping that this time he would return the compliment; but, as before, he said nothing, only looked down at her evenly from a step above. In truth, she was not being entirely honest herself. In the decade since they had seen each other last (a decade—was it truly possible?), he had lived in Paris, Vienna, Prague, and Rome, had traveled through Asia and South America, had composed several well-reviewed shorter pieces and a symphony that had been performed in a concert hall in Boston, and there was talk of a teaching position at Juilliard. He looked young still, but his cheekbones had become more pronounced, imparting a sterner cast to his features; his halo of golden curls had subsided, flattened, darkened; his face had gained a deep, assured stillness over which his painfully familiar expressions skimmed lightly, without, it seemed, touching his essence—a face of someone who knew he had already accomplished something in life and was bound to accomplish much more.

She wondered what changes he saw in her, what he thought of her now, a thirty-three-year-old mother of four. She was not as thin as she used to be. Did he still find her beautiful? Was she still beautiful? Her heart caught with a small, discrete ache. Without another look at him she resumed descending the steps.

“Here it is,” she said, pushing the door open, switching on the dim overhead light. Together they stepped inside a shadowy room packed with a dry, cool smell of wood and earth, and carefully she closed the door behind them—Paul was forever reminding her to pull the door shut, to maintain the proper temperature within. “Always kept at a constant fifty-six degrees,” she said as they walked along the walls. The honeycomb of wine racks was still three-quarters empty, but was filling up at a steady pace. “Paul is really into wines nowadays, he has even taken a wine appreciation course at a local winery. The reds are here, the whites there, you see—”