Andre Aciman - Eight White Nights

Leaning on my arm as she held Boris’s extra-large umbrella for the two of us, she walked past the Franz Sigel memorial statue, both of us hesitating down the stairway that was entirely buried in snow. I used to go snowboarding here, she said.

The quiet, empty Riverside Drive, piled with heavy snow, had grown so narrow it reminded me of an unpaved country road leading to nearby woods that extended for miles before reaching the next small village with its adjoining manor house. You could even stand in the middle of the Drive and never once have to worry about cars, as though on nights such as these a friendlier, quieter, picture-book Manhattan took on life-size dimensions and cast a spell on its otherwise hardened features.

The bus stop stood just across the road. “You might have to wait awhile, I’m afraid,” she said.

Then she took off my coat, gave it back to me, put out her hand, and shook mine.

I am Clara. The handshake.

That coat would never be the same.

Some of her was on my coat now.

Try again: some of me had stayed with her.

Isn’t this why I’d made her wear it?

Correction: there was more of her in me than there was of me.

Yes, that was it. There was more of her in me than there was of me.

And I didn’t mind. If she owned me, I didn’t mind. If she’d read my thoughts because she’d worn my coat and could spell each thought out, one by one now, I didn’t mind. If she knew everything I knew, together with all I had yet to know and might never know, I wouldn’t mind. I wouldn’t mind, I wouldn’t mind.

Soon I saw myself crossing the street. She stood still for a moment, as if to make sure I had gotten there safely, her left arm crossing her chest and clutching her right ribcage to suggest she might turn to ice any moment now but was trying to hold out awhile longer. I had an impulse to say, “Let’s go back — it’s too cold, let’s go back to the party.” I know she would have laughed — at me, at the suggestion, at the sheer joy of it. Just ask me to ask you to go back upstairs. Just ask me and see what I’ll say.

Then, her right hand holding the giant umbrella, she managed to wave a brief goodbye with her left and, turning in the other direction, headed home like the owner of a manor who has kindly escorted a guest to a small unassuming gate, a last farewell chimed by a hidden bell once the gate closes behind him.

•

When the bus came, I’d sit in the seat nearest to the front door, opposite the driver, and watch the scene unfold before me, as I had watched it unfold earlier this evening, except in reverse order. I already wanted to return by bus again, and again, for who knows how many months. I’d take this bus on Sunday mornings, on Saturday afternoons, and Friday nights, and Thursday evenings. I’d take it in the snow, on sunny days in spring, and on the way back on late-autumn evenings when the cast of fading light still glistens on the buildings of Riverside Drive, and I’d think of Clara writing her thesis on Folías and of Clara speaking of Tea-neck and “White Nights” to me on the terrace as we watched the beam circle Manhattan. The bus ride would become part of my life. Because it would lead to this very building, or pass by it each time and remind me that any moment now I’d get off two stops up in a fairy-tale blizzard and walk back to a Christmas party where my name was permanently penciled on the guest list. I’d take this bus perhaps long after Clara and Hans and Rollo and Beryl and Pablo and all the rest of them had moved out of New York, because in thinking of this ritual bus ride through time at this very moment, I might finally make myself forget that Clara was still upstairs, that I hadn’t asked how to spell her name, that it was always easier to think of vanished worlds and lost friendships and party leftovers than look forward to Hans’s repeated invitation that I return in seven days.

After waiting five minutes by myself at the bus stop, I began to give up on the bus. I was also afraid I’d look terribly stupid if anyone upstairs saw me waiting like this for a bus that was clearly never going to come.

I looked up at the rooftop. Scarcely four hours ago I’d been sitting in that same greenhouse. Now it stared down at me as if it didn’t even know me. On our way there she’d opened up a bit and told me about Inky and how, for a while at least, he had put out the darkness in her life. What an odd way of saying it, that was. I had looked outside and promised to remember all this. I was remembering it now. Turn your back on things and they become Bellagio.

Seeing no hint of traffic from behind the bend farther up the Drive, I walked past the Franz Sigel memorial statue back to Clara’s sidewalk and dawdled there awhile, as if looking for an excuse to linger in her neighborhood, examining each of the surrounding buildings like a latter-day Joseph scoping out lobbies and their doormen while Mary waited in the car, hoping all along that someone might eventually open a window upstairs, yell out my name on this silent night, and utter a peremptory Just come back upstairs — it must be freezing out there.

I imagined myself immediately heading back into the building, overlooking Ivan’s or Boris’s formalities at the door so as not to appear unenthusiastic to those who’d opened the window and called out my name, all the while trying to retain the hesitant, undecided air of someone who was only acquiescing in the spirit of fellowship with the casual Why not, but just for a short while of a parent about to concede five more minutes of television time.

Just look at you, you could use a warm drink. Here, let me take your coat, they’d say.

And before I knew it, I’d shake the very same hands I’d shaken goodbye, including those of the latecomers I’d seen downstairs, as if I were an old friend who made the party just in time for breakfast.

There, and all this rush to get away from us.

So why did you leave tonight? as she hands me the same glass she’s been drinking from all evening. That glass, that glass, in a moment I’d be holding that glass.

I left — I don’t know why I’d left. There are so many reasons. There are no reasons. To strike an attitude. To leave something for later. Didn’t want to overstay the welcome. Didn’t want to show I enjoyed it so much, or that I never wanted it to end.

Perhaps I had other things to do—

At four in the morning?

I have my secrets.

Even from me?

Especially from you.

Remind me never to have anything to do with men who have secrets at four in the morning.

Remind me never to be tempted to say everything, because I’m dying to.

Start now. Why did you come back?

If you ask, Clara, it’s because you know already.

Tell me just the same.

Because I didn’t want to go home yet. Because I didn’t want to be alone tonight. Because I don’t know. My heart beat faster and faster as I thought of adding, Because of you.

Because of me? Spoken in Hans’s slow, deliberate manner.

How lovely to say Because of you or Because I didn’t want to be alone tonight. Hello, I don’t want to be alone tonight. I want to be with you. And with your friends. In your world. Your house. And stay after everyone’s gone. Be like you, of you, with you — even if you’re lying low, as I’m lying low, as Hans is lying low, as Beryl and Rollo and Inky and everyone else in this city, alive or dead, lies low, low, low, shipwrecked, damaged, and wanting, alone with you till I smell of you, think like you, speak like you, breathe like you.

Breathe like me? Are you serious?

I got carried away.

From the middle of the street I looked up again and made out the partying silhouettes of so many people resting their backs against the frosted windowpanes upstairs, everyone with outstretched elbows, meaning they were holding wineglasses and plates in their hands — would they really be serving breakfast soon, as in some demented intercontinental red-eye?