Andre Aciman - Eight White Nights

Perhaps it was time for me to leave as well, though I didn’t want to yet. And suddenly it came to me. I should call her, shouldn’t I? Just call her. And say what? I’d figure something out. Time I did something — always waiting for others to do — tell the truth for a change, engage, for crying out loud. I don’t want to be alone tonight. There! She’d know what to say to that. She’d keep the conversation going; and even if she had to say no, it would be a kind no, as in: Can’t, lying low, you see? Ah, but to hear her say it that way, Can’t, lying low, you see? like a reluctant caress that starts but then lingers on your face and shoots straight to your mouth and unbuckles your heart. I reached for my cell. She was the last person to call — hours ago. We’d exchanged numbers while still waiting on line, and she said, Let me call you instead, this way you’ll have my number too. This was before the admonition, before Affirmatov had taken our tickets and crushed them in his fist. There was her number. My heart instantly sank, for the task seemed beyond me. What else were you planning to do with me but call? asked my phone, now that I held it in my hand. I imagined the sharp sound of her ten numerals chiming away like metal spikes hammered into splintering rock, followed by the grumbling, minatory drumroll of the ringing itself. Academy 2 —fancy people still using Academy as a prefix, I’d said to her, to tease her or imply there was something willfully dated and archaic, even a touch precious in the way she’d given me her phone number. Now it was her number’s turn to make fun of me, like a tiny reptile that looked totally docile in the pet store when the salesman made you rub its tummy with the tip of your finger but that now bites into your fingernail and then tears it out. She justified giving out her telephone number that way, because, she said, this was how her mother would say it and how, to very few people whom she felt comfortable with, she continued to say it — with the implication that you ranked among those who instantly understood that her Old World and your Old World shared a lineage in common, though not necessarily on the same branch, because what was defunct and obsolete in you was retro-swanky-cutting-edge in her, and, despite great-grandparents in common and a language in common, we might not have belonged on the same tree at all. So there! Academy 2 for the happy few.

I thought of her phone number — generations of phone calls from desperate boyfriends. How did it ring when you called her late at night? Could she tell by its ring whether it came from hopelessness or guilt or anger and blame or from shyness that hangs up after three rings? Did jealousy have a telltale ring that shouted louder truths than are dreamt of in caller ID?

Oh, Inky, Inky, Inky. How many times had he called tonight? He’d be calling right now. As I would myself. I imagined calling her. Ringing once. Ringing twice. Suddenly she picks up. Huffing. I can hear the water running in the background. Party’s over, Cinderella’s mopping floors. Inky? No, it’s me. It’s you. It’s me. Me trying not to pull an Inky. But clearly doing just that. How do you say I don’t want to be alone tonight now that I can’t think what to say next? Just like that: I don’t want to be alone tonight. Maybe with a question mark? Maybe not. A woman would be crazy not to let you say all this.

An M104 bus stopped on the corner of 106th and Broadway. I caught it just in time and, before sitting, watched the triangular park fade into the snowstorm. I may never see this place again in the snow. And just as I was beginning to believe it, I knew I was lying to myself. I’d come back tomorrow night, and the night after that, and after that as well, with or without her, with or without Rohmer, and just sit here and hope to find a way to avoid thinking that I’d lost her twice in two nights, sensing all along that hers was the face I’d put up around this park to screen me from myself, from all the lies I round up by night if only to think I’m not alone at dawn.

•

Later that night, I was awakened by the loud bang of a snowplow scraping my street. Suddenly I was filled with a feeling so exquisite that, once again, I could only call it joy, Pascal’s word spoken in his solitary room one night at Port-Royal.

It reminded me of that moment when we’d walked out of the bar after last call and found the snow blanketing 105th Street. Our arms kept rubbing each other until she slipped hers into mine. I’d wished our walk might never end.

I got out of bed and looked out the window and saw how peacefully the snow had blanketed the rooftops and side streets of Manhattan. It was — perhaps because it reminded me so much of Brassaï—a stunning black-and-white spectacle of the rooftops of Paris or of Clermont-Ferrand, or of any French provincial town at night, and the joy that suddenly burst within me cast so limitless a spell in my bedroom as I tiptoed my way to another window next to my desk to glimpse a different view of the world by night that I caught myself trying to avoid making any sound: not let the wood floor creak under my feet, or the old counterweights on the sash give their telltale thud when I’d raise the window just a crack and let the cold air in, not do anything to disturb the silence that had glided in as on the wingtips of an angel, because, as I stood watching the night, I could so easily make believe that hidden under my comforter lay someone whose sleep was as light and restive as mine. When I’d come back to bed, I’d try not to move much, find a spot on the right side and lie still and wait for sleep, all the while hoping it wouldn’t come until I’d smuggled the image of her naked body into my dreams.

Tomorrow, first thing, I’d rush out, have breakfast, and try to see my friends and tell them about Clara. Then I’d take a stroll through a department store, lunch at the Whitney among throngs of tourists snapping pictures with their jet-set grandparents, shop for Christmas presents on the day after Christmas, all of it punctuated by the diffident premonition that tonight might happen all over again, must happen all over again, may never ever happen again.

Once again, my mind drifted back to that moment when we’d walked out of the bar after last call and found fresh snow on 105th Street. She’d kissed me on the neck and, after telling me never to hope for anything, snuggled her arm into mine, as though to mean Never mind all this but Never forget all this. Now, in the dark, with the memory of her body leaning on mine, all I had to do was say her name and she’d be under the covers, move an inch and I’d encounter a shoulder, a knee, whisper her name again and again till I’d swear she was whispering mine as well, our voices twined in the dark, like those of two lovers in an ancient tale playing courtship games with one and the same body.

I was in the shower the next morning when I heard the buzzer downstairs. I jumped out of the bathtub, raced past the kitchen door, and yelled a loud “Who is it?” into the intercom, water dripping everywhere.

“It’s me” came the garbled voice in the box, not the doorman’s.

“Me who?” I shouted, exasperated at the deliveryman, as I began frisking for loose bills, first on my dresser, then through last night’s trousers hanging on a chair.

“Me” came the same voice, followed by a moment’s pause. “Me,” it repeated. “ Moah .” Another pause. “Me, Shukoff. Me, lying-low. Miso-souporsalad. Me, goddamnit! How quickly we forget.”

Silence again.

“I’m driving to Hudson,” she shouted.

I demurred a moment. What about Hudson? Did she want to come up? I asked. The thought of her coming upstairs swept through me like an indecent and almost guilty thrill. Let her see my crumpled world, my socks, my bathrobe, my foul rag-and-bone shop, my life.