Andre Aciman - Eight White Nights

What are you doing?

I was taking a walk in the snow. Or just venting.

Venting?

As in learning to live with myself, now that you’re no longer in my life.

No longer in your life?

From the look of things—

From the look of things you’re the one who walked out, not me.

Yes, but from the look of things. .

From the look of things you should take a hike. If I were to run into her on her way home, I’d more than likely run into the two of them together. Even if he wasn’t going upstairs with her, he’d still have to walk her home. Would she give him her arm when they walked together and burrow under his armpit?

When, as I knew would happen, I approached 106th Street, I began to walk slowly. I didn’t want them to see me. But I didn’t want to see them either. Had they had enough time to order another round before leaving the bar? Then I realized why I was hiding — because I was hiding, wasn’t I? — I was ashamed of skulking like this, of hanging around her house, of spying, on them, on her. Stalker. Stalk-ex!

If I had to bump into her at this late hour, all I’d want is for her to be alone.

What’s wrong?

Couldn’t sleep. Didn’t want to be alone. That’s what’s wrong.

What do you want from me? Spoken with impatience, pity, and exhaustion.

I don’t know what I want. I want you. I want you to want me as desperately as I want you.

Why had I let her walk away from me this afternoon? What was I thinking? A woman walks into your house, is clearly telling you she cares, grabs you by the gonads, and you just stand there, jittery Finnegan running for cover while panic-stricken Shem and Shaun race fast behind, clamoring up the Pelvic Highway.

But if she wasn’t alone and if I had to bump into the two of them, I’d utter a mirthful “Couldn’t sleep” and shrug my shoulders, adding, “I was on my way to the bar, hoping you hadn’t left.” I could just picture the two of them standing together on the sidewalk in front of me, disbelieving glances thrown back and forth, all three of us looking so uneasy. Good night, Clara. Good night, Manattàn. And I’d scurry home, knowing that the first thing I’d want to do was call her and say, Manattàn noir, c’est moi.

On the corner of 106th Street and Broadway I decided to walk one block south, turn on 105th, and come back to 106th by way of Riverside. I wanted — or so I told myself — to take a last, farewell look at her building, especially if I wasn’t going to the party in two days. Could be years the next time I come around here, years and years.

But I knew this was just a ruse to take another peek.

The road down 105th couldn’t have been quieter along the row of white town houses that seemed to slumber in an otherworldly, snowbound era of fireplaces and gas jets and hidden stables. No one had shoveled the snow, and it looked as pristine and wholesome as Rockwell’s towns on snowbound nights.

By contrast, her large building, when it came into view on the corner of 106th Street, bore a minatory scowl on its forefront, as though its Gothic windows and friezes knew of my whereabouts in the snow and, like two distrustful Dobermans, were lying still, almost feigning sleep, vigilant and set to pounce as soon as I took another step. Then I spotted Boris’s light and his side entrance door. I could never tell where exactly he sat, but no sooner would we near the door every evening than he’d always be there to let her in. If I wasn’t careful, he’d spot me. I looked up and to my complete surprise noticed that the lights in her living room were all on. How shameful, I thought, spying.

So she must have gotten home while I was walking slowly down Broadway. This either meant that they had had a hasty round of drinks or had decided against it and simply left the bar soon after me. Or she may never have turned off her lights before leaving this morning. Was she the type to leave her lights on all day? I didn’t think so. Chances were, she’d just gotten home and had turned on the lights in the living room. Maybe watching TV. Unless, of course, she was not alone.

I crossed the street at 106th and Riverside and headed north, trying to catch a glimpse of the other rooms immediately upstairs. These were lit up as well, though I couldn’t tell if their light was being referred from the living room. I was not even sure that one of the side windows belonged to her apartment. She had forgotten to show me around after offering to. I had probably tried not to sound too curious, or too eager, and had finally come out sounding indifferent, which perhaps was why she didn’t insist. I remembered wanting to see her bed but not wanting to show I did. Did she make her bed every day or did she leave it undone?

On the corner of 107th I had to make a decision: either walk back down Riverside or walk over to Broadway, and then loop around 105th once again. In the snow, it might take me ten minutes.

There was something so peaceful about walking. It would allow me to think about things, speak to her in my mind, find reasons to see how all this might work itself out one day, even if I knew that such walks seldom bring answers, that no one resolves anything, much less sees through the fog we burrow in, that all walking does is keep our legs and eyes busy the better to keep our mind from thinking anything. The most I’d be capable of right now would be to think about thinking, which meant sinking deeper into myself, which meant blunting everything else, including my thoughts, which meant spinning something everyone else would call daydreams. Perhaps all this wasn’t necessarily headed downhill — even thinking in this quiet, aimless manner was itself, like amnesia and aphasia, a form of healing when the body comes to the mind’s rescue and ever so gently numbs it, wiping bad thoughts one by one as I’d seen the nurse do with the child who was bleeding from the leg, blotting his cuts with soft, delicate, occasional light dabs with a folded piece of gauze, while with deft tweezers she picked out shard after tiny shard of shattered glass, dropping each one in a plastic trough, trying not to make a sound so as not to scare the boy. All my mind wanted now was to fantasize, because images were like feathers on a bruise, while thoughts flowed like iodine on open sores. She and I together when we’d make up. She and I together on New Year’s Day with those friends she said she wanted me to meet. On the last evening of the Rohmer festival, she and I together.

Now I was just walking. Walking to bid farewell. Walking to spy on her. Walking to be one with all the stonework that had watched her grow and knew all about her comings and goings as a child, as a student, as Clara. Walking to drag out my presence in Clara’s world and not to go back home and be alone with my thoughts that aren’t even thoughts any longer but leering gargoyles sprung from a monstrous netherworld I never knew existed in me until I’d seen them milling about me dressed as sandwich men. Walking, let’s face it, in the hope I’d find a portal back into her life. Walking as prayer, pleading, and penance. Walking to refuse the end of love, to refuse the obvious by picking at it, step by step, shard after shard, taking in the truth of it in tiny doses, as one takes poison so as not to die from it.

In years to come, when I’ll pass by her building again, I’ll stop and look upstairs. I don’t know why I’ll look upstairs or what I’ll be looking for each time. But I know I’ll look upstairs, because this purposeless looking upstairs in this kind of dazed and balmy mood I’m in right now is itself remembrance and soul gathering, an instance of grace. I’ll stand there awhile and remember so many things: the night of the party, the night I thought I’d done the right thing by saying goodbye without lingering too long outside her lobby, the night I first felt my nights were numbered here. The night I knew, just knew, she’d change her mind the moment I said, Yes, I’ll come upstairs with you, the evening I looked out her window and wished my life might start all over again, in her living room, because everything about my life seemed to converge on this one room, with Clara, the barge, our strange lingo, and Earl Grey tea, as we sat and spoke of why this piece by Beethoven was really me, while part of me began to think I’d made the whole thing up to make conversation, to stir things up a bit, because I really had no idea why the quartet by Beethoven was me, any more than I knew why Rohmer’s stories were me, or why I wanted to be here on so many winter afternoons with Clara, trying to understand why the best in life sometimes takes two steps forward and three steps back.