Andre Aciman - Eight White Nights

“Milk,” I said.

I liked how she made everything seem normal, habitual, routine, as if we’d been doing this for ages.

Or should I be on my guard: people who make you feel unusually at home when you know you’re just a guest can, within seconds, show you to the door and remind you you’re no better than a deliveryman who rang a doorbell on a hot day asking for a glass of water.

I wondered if we were going to sit next to each other at the large table, as we’d done during lunch, or across from each other, or at a right angle. At a right angle, I decided, and put down the spoons accordingly. “I am sure she has tiny sweets somewhere,” said Clara, who began rummaging through the fridge and the old kitchen cabinets. “Found ’em,” she said.

“ Ach, Liebchen, not sweets after the strudel gâteau,” she said as she helped herself to a box of Leibniz chocolate cookies, tore off the cellophane wrapper, and put four on a dish, which she placed right between what were going to be our seats. She had mimicked the old woman’s accent so well that I couldn’t help laughing, which made her laugh as well. I asked her to repeat what she’d just said.

“No.”

“Come on.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m embarrassed, that’s why.”

“Just say shtroodel ga’tow.”

“Shtroodel ga’tow.”

I felt my stomach muscles tighten. I was dying to kiss her. She could say anything and I’d want to kiss her, make any gesture and I’d be pulled toward her, and if she happened to lean toward me as we tried to speak softly so as not to wake the old couple upstairs, then I’d have to struggle not to put my arm around her as I did at the dining table, but this time I’d let my palm rub her face, once, twice, just keep rubbing that face, and touch those lips, that mouth, and let my face rub against hers; what wouldn’t I give to touch her teeth with my hand, with my lips. We were standing in the kitchen rinsing the dishes.

“Are you happy you came?” I asked.

“Yes. I liked seeing them, I always do. They are like two coiled snakes corkscrewed unto their last. You watch: when one goes, so will the other, like a pair of old slippers.”

“Is that what love is like — a pair of slippers?”

“Don’t know about the slippers. But they are identical, Max and Margo. Inky and I, on the other hand, couldn’t have been more different. Inky doesn’t have a devious bone in his body. Inky wants you to be happy; Inky misses you when you’re gone, runs errands if you ask, fixes things when they break, will die for you if you so much as hint that you want him to jump from this or that ledge. He is kindness and health personified — which is why he’ll never understand me.”

“Because he is not all twisted?”

“Not like us, he isn’t.”

I liked this.

“So you said no to Inky because he’s a healthy human being?”

“So I said no to Inky.” Pause. “Here, eat this cookie, otherwise I’ll eat it, and when I get fat, trust me, I get even more bitter and depressed.”

“Bitter and depressed, you?”

“As if you hadn’t noticed. You’re like me. We’re chipped all over. Like these dishes. Jewish dishes.” She smiled.

I did as I was asked with the dishes. Then we loaded them into the dishwasher. We were standing almost hip to hip, neither budging, until our hips were touching. Neither of us moved away.

She asked if I’d split another Leibniz cookie with her.

“Promise not to be bitter and depressed.”

“I’m already bitter and depressed.”

“Because of me?” I had said it in complete jest and couldn’t possibly have meant what she heard. But she turned to me with her wet pink hand and, with the back of it, touched me once on the cheek, and then again and again. And then she kissed me so close to my lips that she might as well have kissed me all the way. Which is when I let my lips touch hers, once, twice, rubbing her face with my own wet palm as I’d been craving to do all through lunch.

She let me brush her lips, but there was forbearance in her lips, and I knew not to push.

“So you will split another chocolate Leibniz with me.”

“I have no choice.”

“Inky calls these chocolate lesbians. We used to think it was funny. I wonder if there’s anything we can take for the road.”

She ferreted through the cabinets. Nothing. Just M&Ms, probably bought for the grandchildren or for Halloween. The large yellow bag was sealed with a giant clasp. “Let’s take a few.”

We found a small ziplock bag and transferred M&Ms into it with the pantomimed complicity of amateur safecrackers.

“Thank you,” she said.

“For the M&Ms?”

“No, for coming here with me. For knowing. For everything else. And for understanding.”

“Especially for understanding,” I repeated with emphasis and mock-humor.

Thank you for understanding. What a way with words she had. Saying everything and saying nothing.

“I told him I was the wrong woman for him. But did he listen? Then I told him he was the wrong man for me. And he still wouldn’t listen. And he’ll keep fighting it. I know him; he’ll call them tonight and ask if I came by. And they’ll say yes. And he’ll ask if I came alone. And they’ll say no. And he’ll ask who with, and they won’t know, and he’ll call me, and it’ll never end. Happy you came now?”

“You answer.”

“I think you still are.”

She dried her hands, passed me the towel, and began putting the wine away.

“Clara?”

She turned back. “Yes.”

“I want to tell you something.”

She was putting the corks back into the two bottles. This was going to be it.

“You want to tell me something”—again the same restraint in her voice, in the way she held her body and stared at me now—“don’t you think I know?” She looked me in the face. “Don’t you think I know?”

The way she said it broke my heart. I could almost feel a sob rising in my chest. Don’t you think I know? It’s what one said in lovemaking: Don’t you think I know? Don’t you think I know?

I was about to add something, but there was nothing else to say; she had said it all.

“Let’s hear the Handel, then,” she said.

We walked into the living room. She turned on the CD player, then lowered herself to the floor and sat on her knees on the rug. She was already wearing her winter coat. I sat across from her on a chair against the wall. In the same room, saying nothing. And then it started.

I couldn’t understand what it was about this sarabande that had made us come all the way up here to hear it. Perhaps because I had never heard it before. “Isn’t it played a bit too slowly?” I finally ventured to say, trying to suggest that I too could tell it could use some mechanical acceleration.

She shook her head once and said nothing, dismissing my comment for the simple, intrusive thing it was. Then, for no reason, or for a reason I couldn’t begin to fathom, she raised her eyes and began to stare straight at me, but in a vague, lifeless manner, which made me suspect that though she was looking at me and wasn’t looking away, she wasn’t really looking at me either. There was no doubt, though; she was staring. I stared back with the same seemingly unfocused gaze, but she didn’t register my gaze, or didn’t register me, and I thought, This is what happens to people who are entirely rapt by music, whereas I am almost just pretending, the way I almost just pretend to be rapt by food, wine, scenery, art, love. When others listened to music, they became one with music and just stared at you, past you, through you, and expected no reciprocity, no implicit eyebrow signal, because they were already one with things.