Rare first edition of The Great Gatsby lists at $360,000
High schoolers, beware: Before
you annotate your next copy of The Great Gatsby, check the publication date. It
might be worth a fortune.
“The Great Gatsby is considered,
in collecting terms, the No. 1 American novel to collect,” says the
London-based rare book dealer Peter Harrington. “A lot of that has to do with
the dust jacket — people just seem to desperately want it.”
Harrington will soon bring a
first edition of the 1925 book, widely considered F Scott Fitzgerald’s
masterpiece, to New York’s International Antiquarian Book Fair, which runs from
April 21-24 at the Park Avenue Armory.
Harrington’s book is priced at
£275,000 (about $360,000), placing it at the upper tier of a booming
collectible market. “For 20th century literature, this is definitely up there,”
he says. “The truth is, the lockdown and that whole period had been very kind
to the rare book market.”
Like most books, editions of The
Great Gatsby are priced based on a fairly rigid set of criteria: when the book
was printed, the condition of its dust jacket, and if any parts of the book or
jacket have been damaged and/or restored.
The first edition numbered 20,870
copies. The easiest way to determine if a book is from this print run — aside
from just looking inside the cover — is by checking for errors that were
eventually corrected.
One telltale sign from the first
printing is a mistake on the jacket itself. The protagonist’s name, Jay Gatsby,
is spelled with a lower-case j, “and rather than reprint the whole thing, they
literally had someone go over it with a rubber J stamp”, says Harrington. “So,
you see a large J on the back that looks a little weird. And when you collect
these things, that part of the story is part of what makes it fun.”
That very first issue also has at
least five typos inside. Rare book dealer Heather O’Donnell, in a primer on
the Gatsby first edition market in Lapham’s Quarterly, writes that on page 205,
“Meyer Wolfsheim’s secretary tells Nick Carraway she’s ‘sick in tired’ of young
men trying to force their way into the office.”
The jacket is an image by the
painter Francis Cugat, which Fitzgerald had apparently seen before he finished
the book. “For Christ’s sake don’t give anyone that jacket you’re saving for
me,” Fitzgerald wrote to his publisher in advance of publication. “I’ve written
it into the book.”
The only problem is that in the
first printing, the book jacket was slightly too large, making it prone to
tear. “The jacket was produced one place, the book was produced someplace
else,” Harrington explains. “So, it usually got chipped.”
About 20 years ago, Harrington
continues, there was a vogue for restoring these damaged editions. “If there’s
a chunk missing from the spine, a conservator fills it in so it looks like a
nice copy,” he says. But original, untouched, mint-condition versions like the
one he’s bringing to New York only turn up, he says, “every five years or so”.
The book in question “just sat on
someone’s shelf, in a box and unlooked for God knows how long”, says
Harrington.
While in one respect that’s a
pity, he continues, on the other hand “the minute it gets handled is when it
gets trashed”. So, its neglect had a definite silver lining. After its most
recent owner died, his heirs, who knew the calibre of the book they’d
inherited, contacted a Midwest dealer, who in turn contacted Harrington, who
then bought the book outright and is preparing to sell it himself.
The $360,000 price tag, while
steep, does have some precedent. In 2014, an unrestored first edition with a
few small chips in the jacket came to auction at Sotheby’s with an estimate of
$250,000 to $350,000, and sold for $377,000.
More recently, a signed first
edition with some condition issues sold at Heritage Auctions in New York for
$162,500. In 2009, a first edition at Bonham’s New York sold for $180,000.
Harrington says that there are
Gatsby collectors around the world, but he’s bringing it to New York, he hopes,
to sell it to an American. “There are definitely some candidates to buy it in
the marketplace,” he says. “They just need to see it.”
Cathedral by Raymond Carver
This blind man, an old friend of my wife’s, he was on his way to spend the night. His wife had died. So he was visiting the dead wife’s relatives in Connecticut. He called my wife from his in-laws’. Arrangements were made. He would come by train, a five-hour trip, and my wife would meet him at the station. She hadn’t seen him since she worked for him one summer in Seattle ten years ago. But she and the blind man had kept in touch. They made tapes and mailed them back and forth. I wasn’t enthusiastic about his visit. He was no one I knew. And his being blind bothered me. My idea of blindness came from the movies. In the movies, the blind moved slowly and never laughed. Sometimes they were led by seeing eye dogs. Blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to.
That summer in Seattle she needed
a job. She didn’t have any money. The man she was going to marry at the end of
the summer was in officers’ training school. He didn’t have any money, either.
But she was in love with the guy, and he was in love with her, etc. She’d seen
something in the paper: HELP WANTED – Reading to Blind Man, and a telephone
number. She phoned and went over, was hired on the spot. She’d worked with this
blind man all summer. she read stuff to him, case studies, reports, that sort
of thing. She helped him organise his little office in the country
social-service department. They’d become good friends, my wife and the blind
man. How do I know these things? She told me. And she told me something else.
On her last day in the office, the blind man asked if he could touch her face.
She agreed to this. she told me he touched his fingers to every part of her
face, her nose – even her neck! She never forgot it. She even tried to write a
poem or two every year, usually after something really important had happened
to her.
When we first started going out
together, she showed me the poem. In the poem, she recalled his fingers and the
way they had moved around over her face. In the poem, she talked about what she
had felt at the time, about what went through her mind when the blind man
touched her nose and lips. I can remember I didn’t think much of the poem. Of
course, I didn’t tell her that. Maybe I just don’t understand poetry. I admit
it’s not the first thing I reach for when I pick up something to read.
Anyway, this man who’d first
enjoyed her favours, the officer-to-be, he’d been her childhood sweetheart. So
okay. I’m saying that at the end of summer she let the blind man run his hands
over her face, said goodbye to him, married her childhood etc, who was now a
commissioned officer, and she moved away from Seattle. But they’d kept in
touch, she and the blind man. She made the first contact after a year or so.
She called him up one night from an Air Force base in Alabama. She wanted to
talk. They talked. He asked her to send him a tape and tell him about her life.
She did this. She sent the tape. On the tape, she told the blind man about her
husband and about their life together in the military. She told the blind man
she loved her husband but she didn’t like it where they lived and she didn’t
like it that he was part of the military-industrial thing. She told the blind
man she’d written a poem and he was in it. She told him that she was writing a
poem about what it was like to be an Air Force officer’s wife. The poem wasn’t
finished yet. She was still writing it. The blind man made a tape. He sent her
the tape. She made a tape. This went on for years. My wife’s officer was posted
to on base and then another. She sent tapes from Moody AFB, McGuire, McConnell,
and finally Travis, near Sacramento, where one night she got to feeling lonely
and cut off from people she kept losing in that moving-around life. She got to
feeling she couldn’t go it another step. She went in and swallowed all the
pills and capsules in then medicine chest and washed them down with a bottle of
gin. Then she got into a hot bath and passed out.
But instead of dying, she got
sick. She threw up. Her officer – Why should he have a name? He was the
childhood sweetheart, and what more does he want? – came home from somewhere,
found her, and called the ambulance. In time, she put it all on tape and sent
the tape to the blind man. Over the years, she put all kinds of stuff on the
tapes and sent the tapes off lickety-split. Next to writing a poem every year,
I think it was her chief means of recreation. On one tape, she told the blind
man she’d decided to live away from her officer for a time. On another tape, she
told him about her divorce. She and I began going out, and of course she told
her blind man about it. She told him every-thing, or so it seemed to me. Once
she asked me if I’d like to hear the latest tape from the blind man. This was a
year ago. I was on the tape, she said. So I said okay, I’d listen to it. I got
us drinks and we settled down in the living room. We made ready to listen.
First she inserted the tape into the player and adjusted a couple of dials. The
she pushed a lever. The tape squeaked and someone began to talk in this loud
voice. She lowered the volume. After a few minutes of harmless chitchat, I
heard my own name in the mouth of this stranger, this blind man I didn’t even
know! And then this: ‘From all you’ve said about him, I can only conclude – ’
But we were interrupted, a knock at the door, something, and we didn’t ever get
back to the tape. Maybe it was just as well. I’d heard all I wanted to.
Now this same blind man was
coming to sleep in my house.
‘Maybe I could take him bowling,’
I said to my wife. She was at the draining board doing scalloped potatoes. She
put down the knife she was using and turned around.
‘If you love me,’ she said ‘you
can do this for me. If you don’t love me, okay. But if you had a friend, any
friend, and the friend came to visit. I’d make him feel comfortable.’ She wiped
her hands with the dish towel.
‘I don’t have any friends,’ she
said. ‘Period. Besides,’ she said, ‘goddamn it, his wife’s just died! Don’t you
understand that? The man’s lost his wife!’
I didn’t answer. She’d told me a
little about the blind man’s wife. Her name was Beulah. Beulah! That’s a name
for a coloured woman.
‘Was his wife a negro?’ I asked.
‘Are you crazy?’ my wife said.
‘Have you just flipped or something?’
She picked up a potato. I saw it
hit the floor, then roll under the stove.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ she
said. ‘Are you drunk?’
‘I’m just asking,’ I said.
Right then my wife filled me in
with more detail than I cared to know. I made a drink and sat at the kitchen
table to listen. Pieces of the story began to fall into place.
Beulah had gone to work for the
blind man the summer after my wife had stopped working for him. Pretty soon
Beulah and the blind man had themselves a church wedding. It was a little
wedding – who’d want to go to such a wedding in the first place? – Just the two
of them, plus the minister and the minister’s wife. But it was a church wedding
just the same. It was what Beulah had wanted, he’d said. Bu even then Beulah
must have been carrying cancer in her glands. After they has been inseparable
for eight years – my wife’s word, ‘inseparable’ – Beulah’s health went into a
rapid decline. She died in a Seattle hospital room, the blind man sitting
beside the bed and holding on to her hand. They’d married, lived and worked
together, slept together – had sex, sure – and then the blind man had to bury
her. All this without his having ever seen what the goddamned woman looked
like. It was beyond my understanding. Hearing this, I felt sorry for the blind
man for a little bit. And then I found myself thinking what a pitiful life this
woman must have led. Imagine a woman who could never see herself as she was
seen in the eyes of her loved one. A woman who could go on day after day and
never receive the smallest compliment from her beloved. A woman whose husband
could never read the expression on her face, be it misery or something better.
Someone who could wear makeup or not – what difference to him? She could, if
she wanted, wear green eye-shadow around one eye, a straight pin in her
nostril, yellow slacks and purple shoes, no matter. And then to slip off into
the death, the blind man’s hand on her hand, his blind eyes streaming tears –
I’m imagining it now – her last thought maybe this: that he never even knew
what she looked like, and she on an express to the grave. Robert was left with
a small insurance policy and half of a twenty-peso Mexican coin. The other half
went into the the box with her. Pathetic.
So when the time rolled around,
my wife went to the depot to pick him up. With nothing to do but wait – sure, I
blamed him for that – I was having a drink and watching the TV when I heard a
car pull up into the drive. I got up from the soda with my drink and went to
the window to have a look.
I saw my wife laughing as she
packed the car. I saw her get out of the car and shut the door. She was still
wearing a smile. Just amazing. She went around to the other side of the car to
where the blind man was already starting to get out. This blind man, feature
this, he was wearing a full beard! A beard on a blind man! Too much, I say. The
blind man reached into the back seat and dragged out a suitcase. My wife took his
arm, shut the car door, and, talking all the way, moved him down the drive and
then up the steps to the front porch. I turned off the TV. I finished my drink,
rinsed the glass, dried my hands. Then I went to the door.
My wife said, ‘I want you to meet
Robert. Robert, this is my husband. I’ve told you all about him.’ She was
beaming. She had this blind man by his coat sleeve.
The blind man let of of his
suitcase and up came his hand.
I took it. He squeezed it hard,
held my hand, and then he let go.
‘I feel like we’ve already met,’
he boomed.
‘Likewise,’ I said. I didn’t know
what else to say. Then I said, ‘Welcome. I’ve heard a lot about you. We began
to move then, a little group, from the porch into the living room, my wife
guiding him by the arm. The blind man was carrying his suitcase in his other
hand. My wife said things like, ‘To your left here, Robert. That’s it. Sit down
right here. The is the sofa. We just bought this sofa two week ago.’
I started to say something about
the old sofa. I;d liked that old sofa. But I didn’t say anything. Then I wanted
to say something else, small-talk, about the scenic ride along the Hudson. How
going to New York, you should sit on the right-hand side of the train, and
coming from New York, on the left-hand side.
‘Did you have a good train ride?’
I said. ‘Which side of the train did you sit on, by the way?’
‘What a question, which side?’ my
wife said. ‘What’s it matter which side?’ she said.
‘I just asked,’ I said.
‘Right side,’ the blind man said.
‘I hadn’t been on a train in nearly 40 years. Not since I was a kid. With my
folks. That’s been a long time. I’d nearly forgotten the sensation. I have
winter in my beard now,’ he said. ‘So I’ve been told, anyway. Do I look
distinguished, my dear?’ the blind man said to my wife.
‘You look distinguished, Robert,’
she said. ‘Robert,’ she said. ‘Robert, it’s just so good to see you.’
My wife finally took her eyes off
the blind man and looked at me. I had the feeing she didn’t like what she saw.
I shrugged.
I’ve never met, or personally
known, anyone who was blind. This blind man was in his late forties, a
heavy-set, balding man with stopped shoulders, as if he carried a great weight
there. He wore brown slacks, brown shoes, a light-brown shirt, a tie, a sports
coat. Spiffy. He also had this full beard. But he didn’t use a cane and he
didn’t wear dark glasses. I’d always thought dark glasses were a must for the
blind. Fact was, I wished he had a pair. At first glance, his eyes looked like
anyone else’s eyes. But if you looked close, there was something different
about them. Too much white in the iris, for one thing, and the pupils seemed to
move around in the sockets without his knowing it or being able to stop it.
Creepy. As I started at his face, I saw the left pupil turn in towards his nose
while the other made an effort to keep in one place. But it was only an effort,
for that eye was on the roam without it or wanting it to be.
I said, ‘Let me get you a drink.
What’s your pleasure? We have a little of everything. It’s one of our pastimes.’
‘Bub, I’m a Scotch man myself,’
he said fast enough in this big voice.
‘Right,’ I said. Bub! ‘Sure you
are. I knew it.’
He let his fingers touch his
suitcase, which was sitting alongside the sofa. He was taking his bearings. I
didn’t blame him for that.
‘I’ll move that up to your room,’
my wife said.
‘No, that’s fine,’ the blind man
said loudly. ‘It can go up when I go up.’
‘A little water with the Scotch?’
I said.
‘Very little,’ he said.
‘I knew it,’ I said.
He said, ‘Just a tad. The Irish
actor, Barry Fitzgerald? I’m like that fellow. When I drink water, Fitzgerald
said, I drink water. When I drink whiskey, I drink whiskey.’My wife laughed.
The blind man brought his hand up under his beard. He lifted his beard slowly
and let it drop.
I did the drinks, three big
glasses of Scotch with a splash of water in each. Then we made ourselves
comfortable and talked about Robert’s travels. First the long flight from the
West Coast to Connecticut, we covered that. Then from Connecticut up here by
train. We had another drink concerning that leg of the trip.
I remembered having read
somewhere that the blind didn’t smoke because, as speculation had it, they
couldn’t see the smoke they exhaled. I thought I knew that much and that much
only about blind people. But this blind man smoked his cigarette down to the
nubbin and then lit another one. This blind man filled the ashtray and my wife
emptied it.
When we sat down to the table for
dinner, we had another drink. My wife heaped Robert’s plate with cube steak,
scalloped potatoes, green beans. I buttered him up two slices of bread. I said,
‘Here’s the bread and butter for you.’ I swallowed some of my drink. ‘Now let
us pray,’ I said, and the blind man lowered his head. My wife looked at me, her
mouth agape. ‘Pray the phone won’t ring and the food doesn’t get cold,’ I said.
We dug in. We ate everything
there was to eat on the table. We ate like there was no tomorrow. We didn’t
talk. We ate. We scarfed. We grazed that table. We were into serious eating.
The blind man had right away located his foods, he knew just where everything
was on his plate. I watched him with admiration as he used his knife and fork
on the meat. He’d cut two pieces of meat, fork the meat into his mouth, and then
go all out for the scalloped potatoes, the beans next, and then he’d tear off a
hunk of buttered bread and eat that. He’d follow this up with a big drink of
milk. It didn’t seem to bother him to use his fingers once in a while, either.
We finished everything, including
half a strawberry pie.
For a few moments, we sat as if
stunned. Sweat beaded on our faces. Finally we got up from the table and left
the dirty plates. We didn’t look back. We took ourselves into the living room
and sank into our places again. Robert and my wife sat on the sofa. I took the
big chair. We had us two or three more drinks while they talked about the major
things that had come to pass for them in the past ten years. For the most part,
I just listened. Now and then I joined in. I didn’t want him to think I’d left
the room, and I didn’t want her to think I was feeling left out. They talked of
things that had happened to them – to them! – these past ten years. I waited in
vain to hear my name on my wife’s sweet lips: ‘And then my dear husband came
into my life’ – something like that. But I heard nothing of the sort. More talk
of Robert. Robert had done a little of everything, it seemed, a regular blind
jack-of-all-trades. But most recently he and his wife had had an Amway
distributorship, from which, I gathered, they’d earned their living, such as it
was. The blind man was also a ham radio operator. He talked in his loud voice
about conversations he’d had with fellow operators in Guam, in the Philippines,
in Alaska, and even in Tahiti. He said he’d have a lot of friends there if he
ever wanted to go to visit those places. From time to time, he’d turn his blind
face towards me, put his hand under his beard, ask me something. How long had I
been in my present position? (Three years.) Did I like my work? (I didn’t.) Was
I going to stay with it? (What were the options?) Finally, when I thought he
was beginning to run down, I got up and turned on the TV.
My wife looked at me with
irritation. She was heading toward a boil. Then she looked at the blind man and
said, ‘Robert, do you have a TV?’
The blind man said, ‘My dear, I
have two TVs. I have a colour set and a black-and-white thing, an old relic.
It’s funny, but if I turn the TV on, and I’m always turning it on, I turn on
the colour set. It’s funny, don’t you think?’
I didn’t know what to say to
that. I had absolutely nothing to say to that. No opinion. So I watched the
news programme and tried to listen to what the announcer was saying.
‘This is a colour TV,’ the blind
man said. ‘Don’t ask me how, but I can tell.’
‘We traded up a while ago,’ I
said.
The blind man had another taste
of his drink. He lifted his beard, sniffed it, and let it fall. He leaned
forward on the sofa. He positioned his ashtray on the coffee table, and then
put the lighter to his cigarette. He leaned back on the sofa and crossed his
legs at the ankles.
My wife covered her mouth, and
then she yawned. She stretched. She said, ‘I think I’ll go upstairs and put on
my robe. I think I’ll change into something else. Robert, you make yourself
comfortable,’ she said.
‘I’m comfortable,’ the blind man
said.
‘I want you to feel comfortable
in this house,’ she said.
‘I am comfortable,’ the blind man
said.
After she’d left the room, he and
I listened to the weather report and then to the sports roundup. By that time,
she’d been gone so long I didn’t know if she was going to come back. I thought
she might have gone to bed. I wished she’d come back downstairs. I didn’t want
to be left alone with a blind man. I asked him if he wanted another drink, and
he said sure. Then I asked if he wanted to smoke some dope with me. I said I’d
just rolled a number. I hadn’t, but I planned to do so in about two shakes.
‘I’ll try some with you,’ he
said.
‘Damn right,’ I said. ‘That’s the
stuff.’
I got our drinks and sat down on
the sofa with him. Then I rolled us two fat numbers. I lit one and passed it. I
brought it to his fingers. He took it and inhaled.
‘Hold it as long as you can,’ I
said. I could tell he didn’t know the first thing.
My wife came back downstairs
wearing her pink robe and her pink slippers.
‘What do I smell?’ she said.
‘We thought we’d have us some
cannabis,’ I said.
My wife gave me a savage look.
Then she looked at the blind man and said, ‘Robert, I didn’t know you smoked.’
He said, ‘I do now, my dear.
There’s a first time for everything. But I don’t feel anything yet.’
‘This stuff is pretty mellow,’ I
said. ‘This stuff is mild. It’s dope you can reason with,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t
mess you up.’
‘Not much it doesn’t, bub,’ he
said, and laughed.
My wife sat on the sofa between
the blind man and me. I passed her the number. She took it and toked and then
passed it back to me. ‘Which way is this going?’ she said. Then she said, ‘I
shouldn’t be smoking this. I can hardly keep my eyes open as it is. That dinner
did me in. I shouldn’t have eaten so much.’
‘It was the strawberry pie,’ the
blind man said. ‘That’s what did it,’ he said, and he laughed his big laugh.
Then he shook his head.
‘There’s more strawberry pie,’ I
said.
‘Do you want some more, Robert?’
my wife said.
‘Maybe in a little while,’ he
said.
We gave our attention to the TV.
My wife yawned again. She said, ‘Your bed is made up when you feel like going
to bed, Robert. I know you must have had a long day. When you’re ready to go to
bed, say so.’ She pulled his arm. ‘Robert?’
He came to and said, ‘I’ve had a
real nice time. This beats tapes, doesn’t it?’
I said ‘Coming at you,’ and I put
the number between his fingers. He inhaled, held the smoke, and then let it go.
It was like he’d been doing it since he was nine years old.
‘Thanks, bub,’ he said. ‘But I
think this is all for me. I think I’m beginning to feel it,’ he said. He held
the burning roach out for my wife.
‘Same here,’ she said. ‘Ditto.
Me, too.’ ‘She took the roach and passed it to me. ‘I may just sit here for a
while between you two guys with my eyes closed. But don’t let me bother you,
okay? Either one of you. If it bothers you, say so. Otherwise, I may just sit
here with my eyes closed until you’re ready to go to bed,’ she said. ‘Your
bed’s made up, Robert, when you’re ready. It’s right next to our room at the
top of the stairs. We’ll show you up when you’re ready. You wake me up now, you
guys, if I fall asleep.’ She said that and then closed her eyes and went to
sleep.
The news programme ended. I got
up and changed the channel. I sat back down on the sofa. I wished my wife
hadn’t pooped out. Her head lay across the back of the sofa, her mouth open.
She’d turned so that her rope had slipped away from her legs, exposing a juicy
thigh. I reached to draw her robe back over her, and it was then I glanced at
the blind man. What the hell! I flipped the robe open again.
‘You say when you want some
strawberry pie,’ I said.
‘I will,’ he said.
I said, ‘Are you tired? Do you
want me to take you up to your bed? You ready to hit the hay?’
‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘No, I’ll
stay up with you, bub. If that’s all right. I’ll stay up until you’re ready to
turn in. We haven’t had a chance to talk. Know what I mean? I feel like me and
her monopolized the evening.’ He lifted his beard and let it fall. He picked up
his cigarettes and his lighter.
‘That’s all right,’ I said. Then
I said, ‘I’m glad for the company.’
And I guess I was. Every night I
smoked dope and stayed up as long as I could before I fell asleep. My wife and
I hardly ever went to bed at the same time. When I did go to sleep, I had these
dreams. Sometimes I’d wake up from one of them, my heart going crazy.
Something about the Church and
the Middle Ages was on the TV. Not your run-of-the-mill TV fare. I wanted to
watch something else. I turned back to the other channels. But there was
nothing on them, either. So I turned back to the first channel and apologized.
‘Bub, it’s all right,’ the blind
man said. ‘It’s fine with me. Whatever you want to watch is okay. I’m always
learning something. Learning never ends. It won’t hurt me to learn something
tonight. I got ears,’ he said.
We didn’t say anything for a
time. He was leaning forward with his head turned at me, his right ear aimed in
the direction of the set, very disconcerting. Now and then his eyelids drooped
and then they snapped open again. Now and then he put his fingers into his
beard and tugged, like he was thinking about something he was hearing on the
television.
On the screen, a group of men
wearing cowls was being set upon by men dressed in skeleton costumes and men
dressed as devils. The men dressed as devils wore devil masks, horns, and long
tails. This pageant was part of a procession. The Englishman said it took place
in Spain once a year. I tried to explain to the blind man what was happening.
‘Skeletons,’ he said. ‘I know
about skeletons,’ he said, and he nodded.
The TV showed this one cathedral.
Then there was a long, slow look at another one. Finally, the pictures switched
to the famous one in Paris, with its flying buttresses and its spires reaching
up to the clouds. The camera pulled away to show the whole of the cathedral
rising above the skyline.
There were times when the
Englishman who was telling the thing would shut up, would simply let the camera
move around over the cathedrals. Or else the camera would tour the countryside,
men in fields walking behind oxen. I waited as long as I could. Then I felt I
had to say something. I said, ‘They’re showing the outside of this cathedral
now. Gargoyles. Little statues carved to look like monsters. Now I guess
they’re in Italy. Yeah, they’re in Italy. There’s paintings on the walls of
this one church.’
‘Are those fresco paintings,
bub?’ he asked, and he sipped from his drink.
I reached for my glass. But it
was empty. I tried to remember what I could remember. ‘You’re asking me what
are frescos?’ I said. ‘That’s a good question. I don’t know.’
The camera moved to a cathedral
outside Lisbon. The differences in the Portuguese cathedral compared with the
French and Italian were not that great. But they were there. Mostly the
interior stuff. Then something occurred to me, and I said, ‘Something has
occurred to me. Do you have an idea what a cathedral is? What they look like,
that is? Do you follow me? If somebody says cathedral to you, do you have any
notion what they’re talking about? Do you know the difference between that and
a Baptist church, say?’
He let the smoke dribble from his
mouth. ‘I know they took hundreds of workers fifty or a hundred years to
build,’ he said. ‘I just heard the man say that, of course. I know generations
of the same families worked on a cathedral. I heard him say that, too. The men
who began their life’s work on them, they never lived to see the completion of
their work. In that wise, bub, they’re no different from the rest of us,
right?’ He laughed. Then his eyelids drooped again. His head nodded. He seemed
to be snoozing. Maybe he was imagining himself in Portugal. The TV was showing
another cathedral now. This one was in Germany. The Englishman’s voice droned
on. ‘Cathedrals,’ the blind man said. He sat up and rolled his head back and
forth. ‘If you want the truth, bub, that’s about all I know. What I just said.
What I heard him say. But maybe you could describe one to me? I wish you’d do
it. I’d like that. If you want to know, I really don’t have good idea.’
I stared hard at the shot of the
cathedral on the TV. How could I begin to describe it? But say my life depended
on it. Say my life being threatened by an insane guy who said I had to do it or
else.
I stared some more at the
cathedral before the picture flipped off into the countryside. There was no
use. I turned to the blind man and said, ‘to begin with, they’re very tall.’ I
was looking around the room ‘They reach way up. Up and up. Towards the sky.
They’re so big, some of them, they have to have these supports. To help hold
them up, so to speak. These supports are called buttresses. They remind me of
viaducts, for some reason. But maybe you don’t know either? Sometimes the
cathedrals have devils and such carved into the front. Sometimes lords and
ladies. Don’t ask me why this is,’ I said.
He was nodding. The whole upper
part of his body seemed to be moving back and forth.
‘I’m not doing so good, am I?’ I
said.
He stopped nodding and leaned
forward on the edge of the sofa. As he listened to me, he was running his
fingers through his beard. I wasn’t getting through to him, I could see that.
But he waited for me go on just the same. He nodded, like he was trying to
encourage me. I tried to think what else to say. ‘They’re really big,’ I said.
‘They’re massive. They’re built of stone. Marble, too, sometimes. In those
olden days, when they built cathedrals, men wanted to be close to God. In those
olden days, God was an important part of everyone’s life. You could tell this
from their cathedral-building. I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘but it looks like that’s
the best I can do for you. I’m just no good at it.’
‘That’s all right, bub,’ the
blind man said. ‘Hey, listen. I hope you don’t mind me asking you. Can I ask
you something? Let me ask you a simple question, yes or no. I’m just curious
and there’s no offence. You’re my host. But let me ask if you are in any way
religious? You don’t mind me asking?’
I shook my head. He couldn’t see
that, though. A wink is the same as a nod to a blind man. ‘I guess I don’t
believe in it. In anything. Sometimes it’s hard. You know what I’m saying?’
Sure, I do,’ he said.
‘Right,’ I said.
The Englishman was still holding
forth. My wife sighed in her sleep. She drew a long breath and went on with her
sleeping.
‘You’ll have to forgive me,’ I
said. ‘But I can’t tell you what a cathedral looks like. It just isn’t in me to
do it. I can’t do any more than I’ve done.’
The blind man sat very still, his
head down, as he listened to me.
I said, ‘The truth is, cathedrals
don’t mean anything special to me. Nothing. Cathedrals. They’re something to
look at on late-night TV. That’s all they are.’
It was then that the blind man
cleared his throat. He brought something up. He took a handkerchief from his
back pocket. Then he said, ‘I get it, bub. It’s okay. It happens. Don’t worry
about it,’ he said. ‘Hey, listen to me. Will you do me a favour? I got an idea.
Why don’t you find us some heavy paper? And a pen. We’ll do something. We’ll
draw one together. Get us a pen and some heavy paper. Go on, bub, get the
stuff,’ he said.
So I went upstairs. My legs felt
like they didn’t have any strength in them. They felt like they did after I’d
done some running. In my wife’s room, I looked around. I found some ballpoints
in a little basket on her table. And then I tried to think where to look for
the kind of paper he was talking about.
Downstairs, in the kitchen, I
found a shopping bag with onion skins in the bottom of the bag. I emptied the
bag and shook it. I brought it into the living room and sat down with it near
his legs. I moved some things, smoothed the wrinkles from the bag, spread it
out on the coffee table.
The blind man got down from the
sofa and sat next to me on the carpet.
He ran his fingers over the
paper. He went up and down the sides of the paper. The edges, even the edges.
He fingered the corners.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘All right,
let’s do her.’
He found my hand, the hand with
the pen. He closed his hand over my hand. ‘Go ahead, bub, draw,’ he said.
‘Draw. You’ll see. I’ll follow along with you. It’ll be okay. Just begin now
like I’m telling you. You’ll see. Draw,’ the blind man said.
So I began. First I drew a box
that looked like a house. It could have the house I lived in. Then I put a roof
on it. At either end of the roof I drew spires. Crazy.
‘Swell,’ he said. ‘Terrific.
You’re doing fine,’ he said. ‘Never thought anything like this could happen in
your lifetime, did you, bub? Well, it’s a strange life, we all know that. Go on
now. Keep it up.’
I put in windows with arches. I
drew flying buttresses. I hung great doors, I couldn’t stop. The TV station
went off the air. I put down the pen and closed and opened my fingers. The
blind man felt around over the paper. He moved the tips of his fingers over the
paper, all over what I had drawn, and he nodded.
‘Doing fine,’ the blind man said.
I took up the pen again, and he
found my hand. I kept at it. I’m no artist. But I kept drawing just the same.
My wife opened up her eyes and
gazed at us. She sat up on the sofa, her robe hanging open. She said, ‘What are
you doing? Tell me, I want to know.’
I didn’t answer her.
The blind man said, ‘We’re
drawing a cathedral. Me and him are working on it. Press hard,’ he said to me.
‘That’s right. That’s good,’ he said. ‘Sure. You got it, bub. I can tell. You
didn’t think you could. But you can, can’t you? You’re cooking with gas now.
You know what I’m saying? We’re going to really have us something here in a
minute. How’s the old arm?’ he said. ‘Put some people in there now. What’s a
cathedral without people?’
My wife said, ‘What’s going on?
Robert, what are you doing? What’s going on?
‘It’s all right,’ he said to her.
‘Close your eyes now,’ the blind man said to me.
I did it. I closed them just like
he said.
‘Are they closed?’ he said.
‘Don’t fudge.’
‘They’re closed,’ I said.
‘Keep them that way,’ he said. He
said, ‘Don’t stop now. Draw.’
So we kept on with it. His
fingers rode my fingers as my hand went over the paper. It was like nothing
else in my life up to now.
Then he said, ‘I think that’s it.
I think you got it,’ he said. ‘Take a look. What do you think?’
But I had my eyes closed. I
thought I’d keep them that way for a little longer. I thought it something I ought
to do.
‘Well?’ he said. ‘Are you
looking?’
My eyes were still closed. I was
in my house. I knew that. But I didn’t feel like I was inside anything.
‘It’s really something,’ I said.
_
Suddenly, a Knock on the Door. Etgar Keret, translated from the Hebrew
“Tell me a story,” the bearded
man sitting on my living-room sofa commands. The situation, I must admit, is
anything but pleasant. I’m someone who writes stories, not someone who tells
them. And even that isn’t something I do on demand. The last time anyone asked
me to tell him a story, it was my son. That was a year ago. I told him
something about a fairy and a ferret—I don’t even remember what exactly—and
within two minutes he was fast asleep. But here the situation is fundamentally
different. Because my son doesn’t have a beard, or a pistol. Because my son
asked for the story nicely, and this man is simply trying to rob me of it.
I try to explain to the bearded
man that if he puts his pistol away it will only work in his favor, in our
favor. It’s hard to think up a story with the barrel of a loaded pistol pointed
at your head. But the guy insists. “In this country,” he explains, “if you want
something, you have to use force.” He just got here from Sweden, and in Sweden
it’s completely different. Over there, if you want something, you ask politely,
and most of the time you get it. But not in the stifling, sultry Middle East.
All it takes is a single week around here to figure out how things work—or
rather, how things don’t work. The Palestinians asked for a state, nicely. Did
they get one? The hell they did. So they switched to blowing up kids on buses,
and people started listening. The settlers wanted a dialogue. Did anyone pick
up on it? No way. So they started getting physical, pouring hot oil on the border
patrolmen, and suddenly they had an audience. In this country, might makes
right, and it doesn’t matter if it’s about politics or economics or a parking
space. Brute force is the only language we understand.
Sweden, the place the bearded guy
made aliya from, is progressive, and is way up there in quite a few areas.
Sweden isn’t just ABBA or IKEA or the Nobel Prize. Sweden is a world unto
itself, and whatever they have, they got by peaceful means. In Sweden, if he’d
gone to the Ace of Base soloist, knocked on her door and asked her to sing for
him, she’d invite him in and make him a cup of tea. Then she’d have pulled out
her acoustic guitar from under the bed and and play for him. And all this, with
a smile. But here? I mean, if he hadn’t been flashing a pistol I’d have thrown
him right out. Look, I try to reason. “Look yourself,” the bearded guy
grumbles, and cocks his pistol. “It’s either a story or a bullet between the
eyes.” I see my choices are limited. The guy means business. “Two people are
sitting in a room,” I begin. “Suddenly there’s a knock on the door.” The
bearded guy stiffens, and for a moment there, I think maybe the story’s getting
to him, but it isn’t. He’s listening to something else. There’s a knock on the
door. “Open it,” he tells me, “and don’t try anything. Get rid of whoever it
is, and do it fast, or this is going to end badly.” The young man at the door
is doing a survey. He has a few questions. Short ones. About the high humidity
here in summer, and how it affects my disposition. I tell him I’m not
interested in answering his questionnaire but he pushes his way inside anyway.
“Who’s that?” he asks me,
pointing at the bearded guy. “That’s my nephew from Sweden,” I lie. “His father
died in an avalanche and he’s here for the funeral. We’re just going over the
will. Could you please respect our privacy and leave?” “C’mon Man,” the
pollster says and pats me on the shoulder. “It’s just a few questions. Give a
guy a chance to earn a few bucks. They pay me per respondent.” He flops down on
the sofa clutching his binder. The Swede takes a seat next to him. I’m still
standing, trying to sound like I mean it. “I’m asking you to leave,” I tell
him. “Your timing is way off.” “Way off, eh?” He opens the plastic binder and
pulls out a big revolver. “Why’s my timing off? Cause I’m darker? Cause I’m not
good enough? When it comes to Swedes, you’ve got all the time in the world. But
for a Moroccan, for a war veteran who left pieces of his spleen behind, in
Lebanon, you can’t spare a fucking minute.” I try to reason with him, to tell
him it’s not that way at all. That he simply caught me at a delicate point in
my conversation with the Swede. But the pollster raises his revolver to his
lips and signals me to shut up. “Vamos,” he says. “Stop making excuses. Sit
down over there, and out with it.” “Out with what?” I ask. The truth is I’m
pretty uptight by now. The Swede has a pistol too. Things might get out of
hand. East is east and west is west, and all that. Different mentalities. Or
else he could lose it, simply because he wants the story all to himself. Solo.
“Don’t get me started,” the pollster warns. “I have a short fuse. Out with the
story – and make it quick.” “Yeah,” the Swede blends in, and pulls out his
piece too. I clear my throat, and start all over again. “Three people are
sitting in a room.” “And no ‘Suddenly there’s a knock on the door’” the Swede
announces. The pollster doesn’t quite get this point, but plays along with him.
“Get going,” he says. “And no knocking on the door. Tell us something else.
Surprise us.”
I stop short, and take a deep
breath. Both of them are staring at me. How do I always get myself into these
situations? I bet things like this never happen to Amos Oz or David Grossman.
Suddenly there’s a knock on the door. Their gaze turns menacing. I shrug. It’s
not about me. There’s nothing in my story to connect it to that knock. “Get rid
of him,” the pollster orders me. “Get rid of him, whoever it is.” I open the
door just a crack. It’s a pizza delivery guy. “Are you Keret?” he asks. “Yes,”
I say, “but I didn’t order a pizza.” “It says here 14 Zamenhoff Street,” he
snaps, pointing at the printed delivery slip and pushing his way inside. “So
what,” I say, “I didn’t order a pizza.” “Family size,” he insists. “Half
pineapple, half anchovy. Pre-paid. Credit card. Just gimme my tip and I’m outta
here.” “Are you here for a story too?” the Swede interrogates. “What story?”
the pizza guy asks, but it’s obvious he’s lying. He’s not very good at it.
“Pull it out,” the pollster prods. “C’mon, out with the pistol already.” “I
don’t have a pistol,” the pizza guy admits awkwardly, and draws a cleaver out
from under his cardboard tray. “But I’ll cut him into julienne strips unless he
coughs up a good one, on the double.”
The three of them are on the sofa—the
Swede on the right, then the pizza guy, then the pollster. “I can’t do it like
this,” I tell them. “I can’t get a story going with the three of you here and
your weapons and all that. Go take a walk around the block, and by the time you
get back, I’ll have something for you.” “The asshole’s gonna call the cops,”
the pollster tells the Swede. “What’s he thinking, that we were born
yesterday?” “C’mon, give us one and we’ll be on our way,” the pizza guy begs.
“A short one. Don’t be so anal. Things are tough, you know. Unemployment,
suicide bombings, Iranians. People are hungry for something else. What do you
think brought law-abiding guys like us this far? We’re desperate, Man,
desperate.”
I clear my throat and start
again. “Four people are sitting in a room. It’s hot. They’re bored. The air
conditioner’s on the blink. One of them asks for a story. The second one joins
in, then the third . . .” “That’s not a story,” the pollster protests. “That’s
an eye-witness report. It’s exactly what’s happening here right now. Exactly
what we’re trying to run away from. Don’t you go and dump reality on us like
some garbage truck. Use your imagination, Man, create, invent, take it all the
way.”
I nod and start again. A man is
sitting in a room, all by himself. He’s lonely. He’s a writer. He wants to
write a story. It’s been a long time since he wrote his last story, and he
misses it. He misses the feeling of creating something out of something. That’s
right—something out of something. Because something out of nothing is when you
make something up out of thin air, in which case it has no value. Anybody can
do that. But when it’s something out of something, that means it was really
there the whole time, inside you, and you discover it as part of something new,
that’s never happened before. The man decides to write a story about the
situation. Not the political situation and not the social situation either. He
decides to write a story about the human situation, the human condition. The
human condition the way he’s experiencing it right now. But he draws a blank.
No story presents itself. Because the human condition the way he’s experiencing
it right now doesn’t seem to be worth a story, and he’s just about to give up
when suddenly . . .” “I warned you already,” the Swede interrupts me. “No knock
on the door.” “I’ve got to,” I insist. “Without a knock on the door there’s no
story.” “Let him,” the pizza guy says softly. “Give him some slack. You want a
knock on the door? Okay, have your knock on the door. Just so long as it brings
us a story.”
A Temporary Matter. A short story by Jhumpa Lahira
The notice informed them
that it was a temporary matter: for five days their electricity would be cut
off for one hour, beginning at eight P.M. A line had gone down in the last
snowstorm, and the repairmen were going to take advantage of the milder evenings
to set it right. The work would affect only the houses on the quiet tree-lined
street, within walking distance of a row of brick-faced stores and a trolley
stop, where Shoba and Shukumar had lived for three years.
"It's good of them to warn us," Shoba conceded after reading the
notice aloud, more for her own benefit than Shukumar's. She let the strap of
her leather satchel, plump with files, slip from her shoulders, and left it in
the hallway as she walked into the kitchen. She wore a navy blue poplin
raincoat over gray sweatpants and white sneakers, looking, at thirty-three,
like the type of woman she'd once claimed she would never resemble.
She'd
come from the gym. Her cranberry lipstick was visible only on the outer reaches
of her mouth, and her eyeliner had left charcoal patches beneath her lower
lashes. She used to look this way sometimes, Shukumar thought, on mornings
after a party or a night at a bar, when she'd been too lazy to wash her face,
too eager to collapse into his arms. She dropped a sheaf of mail on the table
without a glance. Her eyes were still fixed on the notice in her other hand.
"But they should do this sort of thing during the day."
"When I'm here, you mean," Shukumar said. He put a glass lid on a pot
of lamb, adjusting it so only the slightest bit of steam could escape. Since
January he'd been working at home, trying to complete the final chapters of his
dissertation on agrarian revolts in India. "When do the repairs
start?"
"It
says March nineteenth. Is today the nineteenth?" Shoba walked over to the
framed corkboard that hung on the wall by the fridge, bare except for a
calendar of William Morris wallpaper patterns. She looked at it as if for the
first time, studying the wallpaper pattern carefully on the top half before
allowing her eyes to fall to the numbered grid on the bottom. A friend had sent
the calendar in the mail as a Christmas gift, even though Shoba and Shukumar
hadn't celebrated Christmas that year.
"Today then," Shoba announced. "You have a dentist appointment
next Friday, by the way."
He ran
his tongue over the tops of his teeth; he'd forgotten to brush them that
morning. It wasn't the first time. He hadn't left the house at all that day, or
the day before. The more Shoba stayed out, the more she began putting in extra
hours at work and taking on additional projects, the more he wanted to stay in,
not even leaving to get the mail, or to buy fruit or wine at the stores by the
trolley stop.
Six
months ago, in September, Shukumar was at an academic conference in Baltimore
when Shoba went into labor, three weeks before her due date. He hadn't wanted
to go to the conference, but she had insisted; it was important to make
contacts, and he would be entering the job market next year. She told him that
she had his number at the hotel, and a copy of his schedule and flight numbers,
and she had arranged with her friend Gillian for a ride to the hospital in the
event of an emergency. When the cab pulled away that morning for the airport,
Shoba stood waving good-bye in her robe, with one arm resting on the mound of
her belly as if it were a perfectly natural part of her body.
Each
time he thought of that moment, the last moment he saw Shoba pregnant, it was
the cab he remembered most, a station wagon, painted red with blue lettering.
It was cavernous compared to their own car. Although Shukumar was six feet
tall, with hands too big ever to rest comfortably in the pockets of his jeans,
he felt dwarfed in the back seat. As the cab sped down Beacon Street, he
imagined a day when he and Shoba might need to buy a station wagon of their
own, to cart their children back and forth from music lessons and dentist
appointments. He imagined himself gripping the wheel, as Shoba turned around to
hand the children juice boxes. Once, these images of parenthood had troubled
Shukumar, adding to his anxiety that he was still a student at thirty-five. But
that early autumn morning, the trees still heavy with bronze leaves, he
welcomed the image for the first time.
A member
of the staff had found him somehow among the identical convention rooms and
handed him a stiff square of stationery. It was only a telephone number, but
Shukumar knew it was the hospital. When he returned to Boston it was over. The
baby had been born dead. Shoba was lying on a bed, asleep, in a private room so
small there was barely enough space to stand beside her, in a wing of the
hospital they hadn't been to on the tour for expectant parents. Her placenta
had weakened and she'd had a cesarean, though not quickly enough. The doctor
explained that these things happen. He smiled in the kindest way it was
possible to smile at people known only professionally. Shoba would be back on
her feet in a few weeks. There was nothing to indicate that she would not be able
to have children in the future.
These
days Shoba was always gone by the time Shukumar woke up. He would open his eyes
and see the long black hairs she shed on her pillow and think of her, dressed,
sipping her third cup of coffee already, in her office downtown, where she
searched for typographical errors in textbooks and marked them, in a code she
had once explained to him, with an assortment of colored pencils. She would do
the same for his dissertation, she promised, when it was ready. He envied her
the specificity of her task, so unlike the elusive nature of his. He was a
mediocre student who had a facility for absorbing details without curiosity.
Until September he had been diligent if not dedicated, summarizing chapters,
outlining arguments on pads of yellow lined paper. But now he would lie in
their bed until he grew bored, gazing at his side of the closet which Shoba
always left partly open, at the row of the tweed jackets and corduroy trousers
he would not have to choose from to teach his classes that semester. After the
baby died it was too late to withdraw from his teaching duties. But his adviser
had arranged things so that he had the spring semester to himself. Shukumar was
in his sixth year of graduate school. "That and the summer should give you
a good push," his adviser had said. "You should be able to wrap
things up by next September."
But
nothing was pushing Shukumar. Instead he thought of how he and Shoba had become
experts at avoiding each other in their three-bedroom house, spending as much
time on separate floors as possible. He thought of how he no longer looked
forward to weekends, when she sat for hours on the sofa with her colored
pencils and her files, so that he feared that putting on a record in his own
house might be rude. He thought of how long it had been since she looked into
his eyes and smiled, or whispered his name on those rare occasions they still
reached for each other's bodies before sleeping.
In the
beginning he had believed that it would pass, that he and Shoba would get
through it all somehow. She was only thirty-three. She was strong, on her feet
again. But it wasn't a consolation. It was often nearly lunchtime when Shukumar
would finally pull himself out of bed and head downstairs to the coffeepot, pouring
out the extra bit Shoba left for him, along with an empty mug, on the
countertop.
Shukumar gathered onion
skins in his hands and let them drop into the garbage pail, on top of the
ribbons of fat he'd trimmed from the lamb. He ran the water in the sink,
soaking the knife and the cutting board, and rubbed a lemon half along his
fingertips to get rid of the garlic smell, a trick he'd learned from Shoba. It
was seven-thirty. Through the window he saw the sky, like soft black pitch.
Uneven banks of snow still lined the sidewalks, though it was warm enough for
people to walk about without hats or gloves. Nearly three feet had fallen in
the last storm, so that for a week people had to walk single file, in narrow
trenches. For a week that was Shukumar's excuse for not leaving the house. But
now the trenches were widening, and water drained steadily into grates in the
pavement.
"The lamb won't be done by eight," Shukumar said. "We may have
to eat in the dark."
"We
can light candles," Shoba suggested. She unclipped her hair, coiled neatly
at her nape during the days, and pried the sneakers from her feet without
untying them. "I'm going to shower before the lights go," she said,
heading for the staircase. "I'll be down."
Shukumar
moved her satchel and her sneakers to the side of the fridge. She wasn't this
way before. She used to put her coat on a hanger, her sneakers in the closet,
and she paid bills as soon as they came. But now she treated the house as if it
were a hotel. The fact that the yellow chintz armchair in the living room
clashed with the blue-and-maroon Turkish carpet no longer bothered her. On the
enclosed porch at the back of the house, a crisp white bag still sat on the
wicker chaise, filled with lace she had once planned to turn into curtains.
While
Shoba showered, Shukumar went into the downstairs bathroom and found a new
toothbrush in its box beneath the sink. The cheap, stiff bristles hurt his
gums, and he spit some blood into the basin. The spare brush was one of many
stored in a metal basket. Shoba had bought them once when they were on sale, in
the event that a visitor decided, at the last minute, to spend the night.
It was
typical of her. She was the type to prepare for surprises, good and bad. If she
found a skirt or a purse she liked she bought two. She kept the bonuses from
her job in a separate bank account in her name. It hadn't bothered him. His own
mother had fallen to pieces when his father died, abandoning the house he grew
up in and moving back to Calcutta, leaving Shukumar to settle it all. He liked
that Shoba was different. It astonished him, her capacity to think ahead. When
she used to do the shopping, the pantry was always stocked with extra bottles
of olive and corn oil, depending on whether they were cooking Italian or
Indian. There were endless boxes of pasta in all shapes and colors, zippered
sacks of basmati rice, whole sides of lambs and goats from the Muslim butchers
at Haymarket, chopped up and frozen in endless plastic bags. Every other
Saturday they wound through the maze of stalls Shukumar eventually knew by
heart. He watched in disbelief as she bought more food, trailing behind her
with canvas bags as she pushed through the crowd, arguing under the morning sun
with boys too young to shave but already missing teeth, who twisted up brown
paper bags of artichokes, plums, gingerroot, and yams, and dropped them on
their scales, and tossed them to Shoba one by one. She didn't mind being
jostled, even when she was pregnant. She was tall, and broad-shouldered, with
hips that her obstetrician assured her were made for childbearing. During the
drive back home, as the car curved along the Charles, they invariably marveled
at how much food they'd bought.
It never
went to waste. When friends dropped by, Shoba would throw together meals that
appeared to have taken half a day to prepare, from things she had frozen and
bottled, not cheap things in tins but peppers she had marinated herself with
rosemary, and chutneys that she cooked on Sundays, stirring boiling pots of
tomatoes and prunes. Her labeled mason jars lined the shelves of the kitchen,
in endless sealed pyramids, enough, they'd agreed, to last for their
grandchildren to taste. They'd eaten it all by now. Shukumar had been going
through their supplies steadily, preparing meals for the two of them, measuring
out cupfuls of rice, defrosting bags of meat day after day. He combed through
her cookbooks every afternoon, following her penciled instructions to use two
teaspoons of ground coriander seeds instead of one, or red lentils instead of
yellow. Each of the recipes was dated, telling the first time they had eaten
the dish together. April 2, cauliflower with fennel. January 14, chicken with
almonds and sultanas. He had no memory of eating those meals, and yet there
they were, recorded in her neat proofreader's hand. Shukumar enjoyed cooking
now. It was the one thing that made him feel productive. If it weren't for him,
he knew, Shoba would eat a bowl of cereal for her dinner.
Tonight,
with no lights, they would have to eat together. For months now they'd served
themselves from the stove, and he'd taken his plate into his study, letting the
meal grow cold on his desk before shoving it into his mouth without pause,
while Shoba took her plate to the living room and watched game shows, or
proofread files with her arsenal of colored pencils at hand.
At some
point in the evening she visited him. When he heard her approach he would put
away his novel and begin typing sentences. She would rest her hands on his
shoulders and stare with him into the blue glow of the computer screen.
"Don't work too hard," she would say after a minute or two, and head
off to bed. It was the one time in the day she sought him out, and yet he'd
come to dread it. He knew it was something she forced herself to do. She would
look around the walls of the room, which they had decorated together last
summer with a border of marching ducks and rabbits playing trumpets and drums.
By the end of August there was a cherry crib under the window, a white changing
table with mint-green knobs, and a rocking chair with checkered cushions.
Shukumar had disassembled it all before bringing Shoba back from the hospital,
scraping off the rabbits and ducks with a spatula. For some reason the room did
not haunt him the way it haunted Shoba. In January, when he stopped working at
his carrel in the library, he set up his desk there deliberately, partly
because the room soothed him, and partly because it was a place Shoba avoided.
Shukumar returned to the
kitchen and began to open drawers. He tried to locate a candle among the
scissors, the eggbeaters and whisks, the mortar and pestle she'd bought in a
bazaar in Calcutta, and used to pound garlic cloves and cardamom pods, back when
she used to cook. He found a flashlight, but no batteries, and a half-empty box
of birthday candles. Shoba had thrown him a surprise birthday party last May.
One hundred and twenty people had crammed into the house — all the friends and
the friends of friends they now systematically avoided. Bottles of vinho verde
had nested in a bed of ice in the bathtub. Shoba was in her fifth month,
drinking ginger ale from a martini glass. She had made a vanilla cream cake
with custard and spun sugar. All night she kept Shukumar's long fingers linked
with hers as they walked among the guests at the party.
Since
September their only guest had been Shoba's mother. She came from Arizona and
stayed with them for two months after Shoba returned from the hospital. She cooked
dinner every night, drove herself to the supermarket, washed their clothes, put
them away. She was a religious woman. She set up a small shrine, a framed
picture of a lavender-faced goddess and a plate of marigold petals, on the
bedside table in the guest room, and prayed twice a day for healthy
grandchildren in the future. She was polite to Shukumar without being friendly.
She folded his sweaters with an expertise she had learned from her job in a
department store. She replaced a missing button on his winter coat and knit him
a beige and brown scarf, presenting it to him without the least bit of
ceremony, as if he had only dropped it and hadn't noticed. She never talked to
him about Shoba; once, when he mentioned the baby's death, she looked up from her
knitting, and said, "But you weren't even there."
It
struck him as odd that there were no real candles in the house. That Shoba
hadn't prepared for such an ordinary emergency. He looked now for something to
put the birthday candles in and settled on the soil of a potted ivy that
normally sat on the windowsill over the sink. Even though the plant was inches
from the tap, the soil was so dry that he had to water it first before the
candles would stand straight. He pushed aside the things on the kitchen table,
the piles of mail, the unread library books. He remembered their first meals
there, when they were so thrilled to be married, to be living together in the
same house at last, that they would just reach for each other foolishly, more
eager to make love than to eat. He put down two embroidered place mats, a
wedding gift from an uncle in Lucknow, and set out the plates and wineglasses
they usually saved for guests. He put the ivy in the middle, the white-edged,
star-shaped leaves girded by ten little candles. He switched on the digital
clock radio and tuned it to a jazz station.
"What's all this?" Shoba said when she came downstairs. Her hair was
wrapped in a thick white towel. She undid the towel and draped it over a chair,
allowing her hair, damp and dark, to fall across her back. As she walked
absently toward the stove she took out a few tangles with her fingers. She wore
a clean pair of sweatpants, a T-shirt, an old flannel robe. Her stomach was
flat again, her waist narrow before the flare of her hips, the belt of the robe
tied in a floppy knot.
It was
nearly eight. Shukumar put the rice on the table and the lentils from the night
before into the microwave oven, punching the numbers on the timer.
"You made rogan josh," Shoba observed, looking through
the glass lid at the bright paprika stew.
Shukumar
took out a piece of lamb, pinching it quickly between his fingers so as not to
scald himself. He prodded a larger piece with a serving spoon to make sure the
meat slipped easily from the bone. "It's ready," he announced.
The
microwave had just beeped when the lights went out, and the music disappeared.
"Perfect timing," Shoba said.
"All I could find were birthday candles." He lit up the ivy, keeping
the rest of the candles and a book of matches by his plate.
"It
doesn't matter," she said, running a finger along the stem of her
wineglass. "It looks lovely."
In the
dimness, he knew how she sat, a bit forward in her chair, ankles crossed
against the lowest rung, left elbow on the table. During his search for the
candles, Shukumar had found a bottle of wine in a crate he had thought was
empty. He clamped the bottle between his knees while he turned in the
corkscrew. He worried about spilling, and so he picked up the glasses and held
them close to his lap while he filled them. They served themselves, stirring
the rice with their forks, squinting as they extracted bay leaves and cloves
from the stew. Every few minutes Shukumar lit a few more birthday candles and
drove them into the soil of the pot.
"It's like India," Shoba said, watching him tend his makeshift
candelabra. "Sometimes the current disappears for hours at a stretch. I
once had to attend an entire rice ceremony in the dark. The baby just cried and
cried. It must have been so hot."
Their
baby had never cried, Shukumar considered. Their baby would never have a rice
ceremony, even though Shoba had already made the guest list, and decided on
which of her three brothers she was going to ask to feed the child its first taste
of solid food, at six months if it was a boy, seven if it was a girl.
"Are you hot?" he asked her. He pushed the blazing ivy pot to the
other end of the table, closer to the piles of books and mail, making it even
more difficult for them to see each other. He was suddenly irritated that he
couldn't go upstairs and sit in front of the computer.
"No. It's delicious," she said, tapping her plate with her fork.
"It really is."
He
refilled the wine in her glass. She thanked him.
They
weren't like this before. Now he had to struggle to say something that
interested her, something that made her look up from her plate, or from her
proofreading files. Eventually he gave up trying to amuse her. He learned not
to mind the silences.
"I
remember during power failures at my grandmother's house, we all had to say
something," Shoba continued. He could barely see her face, but from her
tone he knew her eyes were narrowed, as if trying to focus on a distant object.
It was a habit of hers.
"Like what?"
"I
don't know. A little poem. A joke. A fact about the world. For some reason my
relatives always wanted me to tell them the names of my friends in America. I
don't know why the information was so interesting to them. The last time I saw
my aunt she asked after four girls I went to elementary school with in Tucson.
I barely remember them now."
Shukumar
hadn't spent as much time in India as Shoba had. His parents, who settled in
New Hampshire, used to go back without him. The first time he'd gone as an
infant he'd nearly died of amoebic dysentery. His father, a nervous type, was
afraid to take him again, in case something were to happen, and left him with
his aunt and uncle in Concord. As a teenager he preferred sailing camp or
scooping ice cream during the summers to going to Calcutta. It wasn't until
after his father died, in his last year of college, that the country began to
interest him, and he studied its history from course books as if it were any
other subject. He wished now that he had his own childhood story of India.
"Let's do that," she said suddenly.
"Do
what?"
"Say something to each other in the dark."
"Like what? I don't know any jokes."
"No, no jokes." She thought for a minute. "How about telling
each other something we've never told before."
"I
used to play this game in high school," Shukumar recalled. "When I
got drunk."
"You're thinking of truth or dare. This is different. Okay, I'll
start." She took a sip of wine. "The first time I was alone in your
apartment, I looked in your address book to see if you'd written me in. I think
we'd known each other two weeks."
"Where was I?"
"You went to answer the telephone in the other room. It was your mother,
and I figured it would be a long call. I wanted to know if you'd promoted me
from the margins of your newspaper."
"Had I?"
"No. But I didn't give up on you. Now it's your turn."
He
couldn't think of anything, but Shoba was waiting for him to speak. She hadn't
appeared so determined in months. What was there left to say to her? He thought
back to their first meeting, four years earlier at a lecture hall in Cambridge,
where a group of Bengali poets were giving a recital. They'd ended up side by
side, on folding wooden chairs. Shukumar was soon bored; he was unable to
decipher the literary diction, and couldn't join the rest of the audience as
they sighed and nodded solemnly after certain phrases. Peering at the newspaper
folded in his lap, he studied the temperatures of cities around the world.
Ninety-one degrees in Singapore yesterday, fifty-one in Stockholm. When he
turned his head to the left, he saw a woman next to him making a grocery list
on the back of a folder, and was startled to find that she was beautiful.
"Okay" he said, remembering. "The first time we went out to
dinner, to the Portuguese place, I forgot to tip the waiter. I went back the
next morning, found out his name, left money with the manager."
"You went all the way back to Somerville just to tip a waiter?"
"I
took a cab."
"Why did you forget to tip the waiter?"
The
birthday candles had burned out, but he pictured her face clearly in the dark,
the wide tilting eyes, the full grape-toned lips, the fall at age two from her
high chair still visible as a comma on her chin. Each day, Shukumar noticed,
her beauty, which had once overwhelmed him, seemed to fade. The cosmetics that
had seemed superfluous were necessary now, not to improve her but to define her
somehow.
"By
the end of the meal I had a funny feeling that I might marry you," he
said, admitting it to himself as well as to her for the first time. "It
must have distracted me."
The next night Shoba came
home earlier than usual. There was lamb left over from the evening before, and
Shukumar heated it up so that they were able to eat by seven. He'd gone out
that day, through the melting snow, and bought a packet of taper candles from
the corner store, and batteries to fit the flashlight. He had the candles ready
on the countertop, standing in brass holders shaped like lotuses, but they ate
under the glow of the copper-shaded ceiling lamp that hung over the table.
When
they had finished eating, Shukumar was surprised to see that Shoba was stacking
her plate on top of his, and then carrying them over to the sink. He had
assumed she would retreat to the living room, behind her barricade of files.
"Don't
worry about the dishes," he said, taking them from her hands.
"It
seems silly not to," she replied, pouring a drop of detergent onto a
sponge. "It's nearly eight o'clock."
His
heart quickened. All day Shukumar had looked forward to the lights going out.
He thought about what Shoba had said the night before, about looking in his
address book. It felt good to remember her as she was then, how bold yet
nervous she'd been when they first met, how hopeful. They stood side by side at
the sink, their reflections fitting together in the frame of the window. It
made him shy, the way he felt the first time they stood together in a mirror.
He couldn't recall the last time they'd been photographed. They had stopped
attending parties, went nowhere together. The film in his camera still
contained pictures of Shoba, in the yard, when she was pregnant.
After
finishing the dishes, they leaned against the counter, drying their hands on
either end of a towel. At eight o'clock the house went black. Shukumar lit the
wicks of the candles, impressed by their long, steady flames.
"Let's sit outside," Shoba said. "I think it's warm still."
They
each took a candle and sat down on the steps. It seemed strange to be sitting
outside with patches of snow still on the ground. But everyone was out of their
houses tonight, the air fresh enough to make people restless. Screen doors
opened and closed. A small parade of neighbors passed by with flashlights.
"We're going to the bookstore to browse," a silver-haired man called
out. He was walking with his wife, a thin woman in a windbreaker, and holding a
dog on a leash. They were the Bradfords, and they had tucked a sympathy card
into Shoba and Shukumar's mailbox back in September. "I hear they've got
their power."
"They'd better," Shukumar said. "Or you'll be browsing in the
dark."
The
woman laughed, slipping her arm through the crook of her husband's elbow.
"Want to join us?"
"No
thanks," Shoba and Shukumar called out together. It surprised Shukumar
that his words matched hers.
He
wondered what Shoba would tell him in the dark. The worst possibilities had
already run through his head. That she'd had an affair. That she didn't respect
him for being thirty-five and still a student. That she blamed him for being in
Baltimore the way her mother did. But he knew those things weren't true. She'd
been faithful, as had he. She believed in him. It was she who had insisted he
go to Baltimore. What didn't they know about each other? He knew she curled her
fingers tightly when she slept, that her body twitched during bad dreams. He
knew it was honeydew she favored over cantaloupe. He knew that when they
returned from the hospital the first thing she did when she walked into the
house was pick out objects of theirs and toss them into a pile in the hallway:
books from the shelves, plants from the windowsills, paintings from walls,
photos from tables, pots and pans that hung from the hooks over the stove. Shukumar
had stepped out of her way, watching as she moved methodically from room to
room. When she was satisfied, she stood there staring at the pile she'd made,
her lips drawn back in such distaste that Shukumar had thought she would spit.
Then she'd started to cry.
He began
to feel cold as he sat there on the steps. He felt that he needed her to talk
first, in order to reciprocate.
"That time when your mother came to visit us," she said finally.
"When I said one night that I had to stay late at work, I went out with
Gillian and had a martini."
He
looked at her profile, the slender nose, the slightly masculine set of her jaw.
He remembered that night well; eating with his mother, tired from teaching two
classes back to back, wishing Shoba were there to say more of the right things
because he came up with only the wrong ones. It had been twelve years since his
father had died, and his mother had come to spend two weeks with him and Shoba,
so they could honor his father's memory together. Each night his mother cooked
something his father had liked, but she was too upset to eat the dishes
herself, and her eyes would well up as Shoba stroked her hand. "It's so
touching," Shoba had said to him at the time. Now he pictured Shoba with
Gillian, in a bar with striped velvet sofas, the one they used to go to after
the movies, making sure she got her extra olive, asking Gillian for a
cigarette. He imagined her complaining, and Gillian sympathizing about visits
from in-laws. It was Gillian who had driven Shoba to the hospital.
"Your turn," she said, stopping his thoughts.
At the
end of their street Shukumar heard sounds of a drill and the electricians
shouting over it. He looked at the darkened facades of the houses lining the
street. Candles glowed in the windows of one. In spite of the warmth, smoke
rose from the chimney.
"I
cheated on my Oriental Civilization exam in college," he said. "It
was my last semester, my last set of exams. My father had died a few months
before. I could see the blue book of the guy next to me. He was an American
guy, a maniac. He knew Urdu and Sanskrit. I couldn't remember if the verse we
had to identify was an example of a ghazal or not. I looked at
his answer and copied it down."
It had
happened over fifteen years ago. He felt relief now, having told her.
She
turned to him, looking not at his face, but at his shoes — old moccasins he
wore as if they were slippers, the leather at the back permanently flattened.
He wondered if it bothered her, what he'd said. She took his hand and pressed
it. "You didn't have to tell me why you did it," she said, moving
closer to him.
They sat
together until nine o'clock, when the lights came on. They heard some people
across the street clapping from their porch, and televisions being turned on.
The Bradfords walked back down the street, eating ice-cream cones and waving.
Shoba and Shukumar waved back. Then they stood up, his hand still in hers, and
went inside.
Somehow, without saying
anything, it had turned into this. Into an exchange of confessions — the little
ways they'd hurt or disappointed each other, and themselves. The following day
Shukumar thought for hours about what to say to her. He was torn between
admitting that he once ripped out a photo of a woman in one of the fashion
magazines she used to subscribe to and carried it in his books for a week, or
saying that he really hadn't lost the sweater-vest she bought him for their
third wedding anniversary but had exchanged it for cash at Filene's, and that
he had gotten drunk alone in the middle of the day at a hotel bar. For their
first anniversary, Shoba had cooked a ten-course dinner just for him. The vest
depressed him. "My wife gave me a sweater-vest for our anniversary,"
he complained to the bartender, his head heavy with cognac. "What do you
expect?" the bartender had replied. "You're married."
As for
the picture of the woman, he didn't know why he'd ripped it out. She wasn't as
pretty as Shoba. She wore a white sequined dress, and had a sullen face and
lean, mannish legs. Her bare arms were raised, her fists around her head, as if
she were about to punch herself in the ears. It was an advertisement for
stockings. Shoba had been pregnant at the time, her stomach suddenly immense,
to the point where Shukumar no longer wanted to touch her. The first time he
saw the picture he was lying in bed next to her, watching her as she read. When
he noticed the magazine in the recycling pile he found the woman and tore out
the page as carefully as he could. For about a week he allowed himself a
glimpse each day. He felt an intense desire for the woman, but it was a desire
that turned to disgust after a minute or two. It was the closest he'd come to
infidelity.
He told
Shoba about the sweater on the third night, the picture on the fourth. She said
nothing as he spoke, expressed no protest or reproach. She simply listened, and
then she took his hand, pressing it as she had before. On the third night, she
told him that once after a lecture they'd attended, she let him speak to the
chairman of his department without telling him that he had a dab of pâté on his
chin. She'd been irritated with him for some reason, and so she'd let him go on
and on, about securing his fellowship for the following semester, without
putting a finger to her own chin as a signal. The fourth night, she said that
she never liked the one poem he'd ever published in his life, in a literary
magazine in Utah. He'd written the poem after meeting Shoba. She added that she
found the poem sentimental.
Something happened when the house was dark. They were able to talk to each
other again. The third night after supper they'd sat together on the sofa, and
once it was dark he began kissing her awkwardly on her forehead and her face,
and though it was dark he closed his eyes, and knew that she did, too. The
fourth night they walked carefully upstairs, to bed, feeling together for the
final step with their feet before the landing, and making love with a
desperation they had forgotten. She wept without sound, and whispered his name,
and traced his eyebrows with her finger in the dark. As he made love to her he
wondered what he would say to her the next night, and what she would say, the
thought of it exciting him. "Hold me," he said, "hold me in your
arms," By the time the lights came back on downstairs, they'd fallen
asleep.
The morning of the fifth
night Shukumar found another notice from the electric company in the mailbox.
The line had been repaired ahead of schedule, it said. He was disappointed. He
had planned on making shrimp malai for Shoba, but when he
arrived at the store he didn't feel like cooking anymore. It wasn't the same,
he thought, knowing that the lights wouldn't go out. In the store the shrimp
looked gray and thin. The coconut milk tin was dusty and overpriced. Still, he
bought them, along with a beeswax candle and two bottles of wine.
She came
home at seven-thirty. "I suppose this is the end of our game," he
said when he saw her reading the notice.
She
looked at him. "You can still light candles if you want." She hadn't
been to the gym tonight. She wore a suit beneath the raincoat. Her makeup had
been retouched recently.
When she
went upstairs to change, Shukumar poured himself some wine and put on a record,
a Thelonius Monk album he knew she liked.
When she
came downstairs they ate together. She didn't thank him or compliment him. They
simply ate in a darkened room, in the glow of a beeswax candle. They had
survived a difficult time. They finished off the shrimp. They finished off the
first bottle of wine and moved on to the second. They sat together until the
candle had nearly burned away. She shifted in her chair, and Shukumar thought
that she was about to say something. But instead she blew out the candle, stood
up, turned on the light switch, and sat down again.
"Shouldn't we keep the lights off?" Shukumar asked. She set her plate
aside and clasped her hands on the table. "I want you to see my face when
I tell you this," she said gently.
His
heart began to pound. The day she told him she was pregnant, she had used the
very same words, saying them in the same gentle way, turning off the basketball
game he'd been watching on television. He hadn't been prepared then. Now he
was.
Only he
didn't want her to be pregnant again. He didn't want to have to pretend to be
happy.
"I've been looking for an apartment and I've found one," she said,
narrowing her eyes on something, it seemed, behind his left shoulder. It was
nobody's fault, she continued. They'd been through enough. She needed some time
alone. She had money saved up for a security deposit. The apartment was on
Beacon Hill, so she could walk to work. She had signed the lease that night
before coming home.
She
wouldn't look at him, but he stared at her. It was obvious that she'd rehearsed
the lines. All this time she'd been looking for an apartment, testing the water
pressure, asking a Realtor if heat and hot water were included in the rent. It
sickened Shukumar, knowing that she had spent these past evenings preparing for
a life without him. He was relieved and yet he was sickened. This was what
she'd been trying to tell him for the past four evenings. This was the point of
her game.
Now it
was his turn to speak. There was something he'd sworn he would never tell her,
and for six months he had done his best to block it from his mind. Before the
ultrasound she had asked the doctor not to tell her the sex of their child, and
Shukumar had agreed. She had wanted it to be a surprise.
Later,
those few times they talked about what had happened, she said at least they'd
been spared that knowledge. In a way she almost took pride in her decision, for
it enabled her to seek refuge in a mystery. He knew that she assumed it was a
mystery for him, too. He'd arrived too late from Baltimore — when it was all
over and she was lying on the hospital bed. But he hadn't. He'd arrived early
enough to see their baby, and to hold him before they cremated him. At first he
had recoiled at the suggestion, but the doctor said holding the baby might help
him with the process of grieving. Shoba was asleep. The baby had been cleaned
off, his bulbous lids shut tight to the world.
"Our baby was a boy," he said. "His skin was more red than
brown. He had black hair on his head. He weighed almost five pounds. His
fingers were curled shut, just like yours in the night."
Shoba
looked at him now, her face contorted with sorrow. He had cheated on a college
exam, ripped a picture of a woman out of a magazine. He had returned a sweater
and got drunk in the middle of the day instead. These were the things he had
told her. He had held his son, who had known life only within her, against his
chest in a darkened room in an unknown wing of the hospital. He had held him
until a nurse knocked and took him away, and he promised himself that day that
he would never tell Shoba, because he still loved her then, and it was the one
thing in her life that she had wanted to be a surprise.
Shukumar
stood up and stacked his plate on top of hers. He carried the plates to the
sink, but instead of running the tap he looked out the window. Outside the
evening was still warm, and the Bradfords were walking arm in arm. As he
watched the couple the room went dark, and he spun around. Shoba had turned the
lights off. She came back to the table and sat down, and after a moment
Shukumar joined her. They wept together, for the things they now knew.