Andre Aciman - Eight White Nights

It had seen us come and go and, for a minute now, seemed to light up its deck to hail us from far away across the Hudson, as if to say, You mortals, you lucky, holy pair who remembered me tonight when you could so easily have looked the other way and made light of my years, take a good look at this damp, ferruginous, scrap-metal tub stuck out in the middle of my hoary winters, don’t think I don’t know what it means to be young, to hope, to fear, to crave, as you come and go, and may come and go again on this drive, I who have seen riversides aplenty and gone up and down the world like so many phantom ships before me, oh, never become ghost ships, marking your years with layers of rust till the water seeps through and you’re nothing but a slough and a hollow hull stranded after many wrong turns and shallow bends, till the rudder is no longer quite yours, and the rust is no longer quite yours, and you won’t remember you were a ship once — yours is the real journey, not mine. Oh, don’t take me away and unbolt me as they unbuckle the dead, but think of me as both the light and the way, and remember this day, for the time comes only once in a lifetime and the rest, in thirty years, is good for nothing except to remember that time.

“Printz Oskár,” she finally said.

“Yes,” I answered.

“Printz Oskár.”

“Yes!” I repeated.

“Nothing, I like saying it.”

The girl is in love with me, and she doesn’t even know it.

•

I thought of the evening awaiting us. Two films, the walk in the snow to the same bar, where we’d take the same seats, though side by side this time, and order the same drink, talk, laugh, dance to the same song, maybe twice, and then the dreaded walk home past my spot in Straus Park, where I’d want to tell her, or maybe not, about my spot in the park, all of it followed by the perfunctory good-night kiss at her door, which would most likely try to seem perfunctory, though maybe not, and finally, after watching her disappear into her elevator with Boris minding the foyer, my walk back to the park, where I’d stop tonight as well, sit on my bench if it wasn’t wet, and just stare at the fountain, look at the trees in the middle of this nothing park off Broadway, and wonder which part I liked best, spending the entire day with Clara or coming all alone here to think of the Clara I’d just spent the entire day with — hoping not to have an answer, because all answers were right till they turned and proved the question wrong, the way so many things were right and then wrong and then right again, till all we had was our nightly colloquy, with the candles lit around us and our shadow selves rubbing shoulders as we’d done at Edy’s, and in our pub, and during lunch, and when we listened to the music, and washed the dishes, and sat together in the theater, shoulder to shoulder, speaking shadow words each to each.

On my way home that night, I received a text message.

PRINTZ OSKAR ONE DAY I’M GOING TO HAVE TO SEND YOU A TEXT MESSAGE

What is your hell?” I had planned to ask her. It would have been my way of drawing her out and helping her lower her defenses. I liked it when she spoke about herself. I liked when she cried, liked when we sat inside the booth at Edy’s in the dark and I had almost held her hand and kissed both palms at the same time, liked her when, past midnight after the movies, she said they made good fries at our usual place, because she knew I wanted to be back there and, better yet, be at the same table, side by side, and pick up where we’d left off our talk of Rohmer and the men and women who were all about the obvious but had lost their way around it. I liked the way she skipped out of the movie theater in between films and found an open newspaper vendor who sold M&Ms, because we’d forgotten those we had poured out into a small ziplock bag in Margo’s kitchen. Meanwhile, she had also found the time to buy two grandes. Morning and evening, she said. I assumed she’d also taken the time to check her messages. How many times had he called? I asked. Just eight — and that’s not counting the messages he left on her home phone. Wasn’t she curious to know what he’d said in them? She knew what he’d said in each. I would much rather have seen her pity and kiss him than prove she could churn kindness into venom.

After we’d said goodbye at night, I’d made myself promise not to expect her to call me the next day, not to expect to see or hear from her in who knows how long, and certainly never to think of calling her. Unless I had good reason to. The best reason sprung on me hours later, but I didn’t heed it.

At first I wanted to call her and tell her that. . that I was happy to have spent the day with her and, in the process, make a few references to the day’s markers — Bach, strudel gâteau, Rohmer again, and the sudden appearance of the Prince Oscar along the Henry Hudson lying in wait for us, or the goodbye kiss it was no less awkward to seek than to avoid.

But call and say what? That I took back every joke made at Herr Jäcke’s expense? That I’d spent an amazing day precisely as she foretold? That there’s so much to say? So, say it. I don’t know where to start. Is this going to take forever? I just wish you’d come home with me now, tonight, this moment. Why didn’t you ask me then, Oskár? Because I just couldn’t, because you’re so fucking forbidding with your hot-cold, fire-ice, speak-don’t-speak airs. Because I can’t make out where you are, who you are. Printz Oskár! Clara Brunschvicg! Good night. Good night. There’d be a moment of silence. Clara Brunschvicg. . What? Clara Brunschvicg — Don’t say it, she’d interrupt. Don’t want me to say it? No. Then you say it. Printz Oskár, let’s not do this now. Tell me why you don’t want us to say it, tell me, tell me, tell me.

I could have called on my way back home.

I could have called in the cab.

I could have called once I got home.

I could have called you while you were in the elevator, called your name while you were speaking to Boris, shouted “Clara!”

I could have answered her message as soon as I got it. One day I’m going to have to send you a text message. Written in typical Claraspeak, in stone, like a glyph that no one can decipher, not even its author. What could One day I’m going to have to send you a text message possibly mean? That this is not the text message she means to write, that the message she will write one day will say much, much more, and that this was just a teaser, a stay-tuned signal, with or without sequel? Or did it mean: I wish I had more to say, I wish I had the courage to say more, I wish I could tell you what I know you want to hear — why don’t you ask me, why don’t you just ask me, goddamnit? I wish you would read in between the lines, as I know you will and love to do, because you’ll take nothing I say at face value, which is why I must speak in double-speak, though I do not want to speak in cipher, especially to you, but am reduced to speak in the bleakest of codes.

I kept reading the text message for at least an hour, as if it had come with a crib note I had accidentally lost. I should have answered something right away. But by three I had not answered, and I didn’t want her to think that I was the sort who checks messages in the wee hours of the morning. By four, when I awoke from a dream I couldn’t even remember, I thought I should answer with something witty: “ Ceci n’est pas un message non plus. Go to bed.” But then I thought: Let her stew awhile.

It did not occur to me that of the two of us I was and would always be the one stewing, not Clara. She didn’t do stewing. She’d written her SMS off the cuff and then gone to bed. Or did she just want me to think she’d written it off the cuff, then gone to bed?