Andre Aciman - Eight White Nights

Whoever minded having the palm of his hand kissed? Even if last night’s beggar woman kissed the inside of my hand, I’d have let her. I gave her an awkward glance, meaning, I know, I know, lying low.

“You did it all wrong,” she explained.

I was dumbfounded. What now?

“Scarf!”

“What about scarf?”

“I hate this knot.”

She untied my scarf and redid the knot the way she liked.

The knot will stay with me till I get home, I know myself. I’d probably want to keep it awhile longer, even with the heat full throttle at home. Get naked with Clara’s knot, get naked with Clara’s knot. Tied me up in knots, that’s what. Last night I’d intentionally undone my scarf to show I had my own way of doing things, thank you very much. But that was last night.

Ivan-Boris-Feodor opened the door for her. I said I would call. But I wanted her to think I wasn’t sure I would. Perhaps I wanted to think so myself. Then she went inside. I watched her step into the elevator.

I remembered the scent of loud perfumes in the corridor fused to that vague, old-elevator smell that had welcomed me to her building. Last night.

I stood there gathering my thoughts, trying to decide whether to walk up to the 110th Street train station or simply hail a cab, wondering which of the dark windows in her building would light up within minutes of our goodbye. I should stay awhile and see which window it was. But what I really wanted was to see her rush out the door looking for me. Something even told me the same impulse had crossed her mind and that she was debating it right then and there, which could be why she hadn’t turned on her lights yet. I waited a few seconds more. Then I remembered I didn’t know which side of the building her apartment faced.

I walked to the corner of 106th and West End, convinced more than ever now that I must never see her again.

I crossed over to Straus Park, following the flakes of snow that were massing like a frenzy of bees swarming in the halo of a streetlamp, growing ever more dense as I looked beyond them uptown and over toward the river and the distant lights of New Jersey. I pictured her in that oversized sweater. All evening long, even at the movies, it had made me think of a rough wool blanket with room for two in it. I wondered what the world smelled of under that blanket, was it my world with its usual, day-to-day odors or a totally alien, unfamiliar world with scents as new and thrilling as those of equatorial fruit — what did life feel like from Clara’s side, from under her sweater, how different was our city when stared at through the lattice of her stitches — how did one think of things when one was Clara, did one read minds, did one always stare people down when one was Clara? Did one shush people when they complained? Or was one like everyone else? What had I looked like when she stared at me with her shawl covering all but her face, thinking to herself, Ah, he’s dying to kiss me, I know, wants to put his hands under my shirt the way Inky did last night, and he thinks I can’t tell his Guido’s up to no good.

•

It felt good to be alone and think of her and coddle the thrill in my mind without letting go. Here, before crossing the street, she had spoken to me of Leo Czernowicz’s lost pianola roll of Handel’s arias and sarabandes as one speaks of unsolved crimes and missing heirlooms. I wondered if the bootprints before me were hers. No one else had stepped on this side of the park since we’d headed toward her building. She had hummed the first few bars, the same voice I’d heard last night. Just a voice, I thought. And yet.

“I’d love to,” I’d said when she asked if I wanted to hear Czernowicz’s lost pianola roll one day.

When I walked into the park from the same exact spot where I’d entered last night, I knew that I would once again step into a realm of silence and ritual — a soft, quiet, limelit world where time stops and where one thinks of miracles, and of quiet beauty, and of how the things we want most in life are so rarely given that when they are finally granted we seldom believe, don’t dare touch, and, without knowing, turn them down and ask them to reconsider whether it’s really us they’re truly being offered to. Wasn’t this what I had done when I prematurely buttoned up my coat in front of her doorman — to show that I could take my leave and not say anything about meeting again, or coming upstairs, staying upstairs? Why go out of my way to show so much indifference, when it would have been obvious to a two-year-old. . Strange. No, not strange. Typical. The distance of a day had changed nothing between us. I was no closer to her now than I’d been last night. If anything, the distance was greater now and had solidified into something more pointed, craggier.

As I loitered about the park and looked around me, I knew I didn’t mind the sorrow, didn’t mind the loss. I loved lingering in her park, liked the snow, the silence, liked feeling totally rudderless and lost, liked suffering, if only because it brought me back to last night’s vigil and enchantment. Come here as often as you please, come here after every one of your hopes is dashed, and I’ll restore you and make you whole, and give you something to remember and feel good by, just come and be with me, and I’ll be like love to you.

I cleared the snow off the same bench I had used last night and sat down. Let everything be like last night. I crossed my arms and, at the risk of being seen from her window, sat there staring at the bare trees. No one in the park. Just the statue, its lean, sandaled foot hanging from the pedestal, snow resting on her toes. Behind me, I made out the rhythmic rattle of a tire chain, reminding me of old-style patrol cars. A police car did appear from nowhere, turned on 106th, and sidled up to a parked bus. A silent greeting between the two drivers. Then the patrol car swooped around, made a brisk U-turn, and began speeding down West End. Officer Rahoon and two other cops. Good thing he didn’t see me. Officer Rahoon, Muldoon, and Culhoon — three cops in a carriage, three beers and a cabbage. Was that it, then, the magic gone, Cinderella’s back mopping floors?

Total silence descended.

The lamppost nearest me stood upon its gleaming pool of light and, once again, seemed to lean toward me as it had done last night, as eager to help, though still without knowing how.

What had it all meant? I wondered — the staring, the chummy-chummy hug-hug and perfunctory two kisses, French-style, the bit about how she knows herself, and telling me not to look so glum, and so much talk of lying low, and mournful hints of love and admonition laced into the sad tale of lost Czernowhiskeys, all of it capped with a bitter I don’t think I need to spell it out, it might ruin things, like venom at the end of a love bite.

Ruin what things? Do me a favor!

Just don’t fall in love with me. Which is when she planted a kiss under my ear— You smell good, uttered almost like a jeer and an afterthought. Venom, venom, venom. Venom and its antidote, like the warm, puffed taste of newly baked bread on a cold morning when the crust suddenly cuts into your gum and turns the most wholesome taste on earth into rank and fulsome gunk. No things , okay? meaning, No sullen faces, no sulky-pouties, no guilt stuff, okay? Because it could turn into her hell. Get real, Schwester ! The mopey heiress from Maine didn’t rattle so many keys before unlocking the fortress. The small-time hussy speaks the lingo of eternity — do me a favor! And all that talk of lying low — what prattle and claptrap!

I heard the bus driver turn on his engine. The lights inside the bus flickered on. How snug the foggy orange glow behind the glass panes, a haven from the cold. Just me and the bus driver, the bus driver and me.