Ivan, Ivan. He got up in the morning, put on some clothes he got from somewhere, drank his orange juice, and went out into the world of chalkboards and motorcycles. He could be really arrogant sometimes. His jeans were always too short, and he thought clowns had something complicated to teach us about human fallibility. And still no waking moment went by that I didn’t think of him—he was in the background of everything I thought. My own perceptions were no longer enough to constitute the physical world for me. Every sound, every syllable that reached me, I wanted to filter through his consciousness. At a word from him I would have followed him anywhere, right off the so-called Prudential Center. A thousand glowing seat belts appeared in the dark, and the floor began to shake.
A voice said we were passing through some turbulence and should return to our seats, but nobody came to chase us out of the fold-down chair. At first I liked the shaking, but as it grew more violent, I began to feel smaller and smaller and loose in this world, like a ball in a lottery machine. I tried to hold on to a seat back, but I couldn’t reach and was sure I was going to fall.
I didn’t fall. The plane tilted in the opposite direction, and then it was Ivan who had to scramble to keep his balance, and then the plane righted itself.
On the movie screen, the couple in camouflage leaped into a helicopter, and credits rolled over the helicopter. Then there was another prayer call, and then the map came back on the screen. We were flying over Iceland. It was five in the morning, Boston time.
“Our usual hour,” Ivan observed. “Aren’t you sleepy?”
“No.”
“How could I forget? You’re never sleepy.”
We sat for a minute in silence.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I think I’m pretty useless.”
“Useless?”
“I just think we should try to get some sleep. Even you.”
Bill and Svetlana formed a continuous hulking mass, deaf as coral. A cone of light hung over my empty seat.
Ivan cleared his throat. “You can get back in there,” he said.
I held the back of Bill’s seat, climbed onto his armrest, and stepped across his lap to Svetlana’s armrest. In the process, I bumped Bill in the face with the seat of my jeans.
“Whatsthat!” he exclaimed.
“Sorry, sorry,” I said. “Go back to sleep.”
Svetlana opened one eye. “Bill woke up with your butt in his face!” She sighed. “That’s so funny.”
? ? ?
It was a beautiful morning in the sparkling, futuristic airport. I stood next to Ivan at the baggage carousel.
“Bonjour,” he said.
“Hi,” I said.
We stood watching the luggage pass us by like barrels in the river of time.
“I see my bag,” he said. He didn’t move. I wondered which bag was his. I tried to picture him carrying each of them. The one he claimed was a red internal-frame backpack, and then an Aiwa CD player in its box. He slung the backpack over his shoulder and tucked the box under his arm. “So,” he said. “I’ll see you in Budapest.”
“So long,” I said.
He turned and walked into the revolving doors. When the compartment reappeared, it was empty.
Seeing my own suitcase, I dragged it off the carousel and over to Svetlana, Bill, and Robin.
“You’ve got it really bad,” Bill informed me. “Your whole expression changes when you look at him. You look scared to death.”
“Don’t worry.” Robin patted my arm. “We’re in the world’s most beautiful city. You’ll forget all about him.”
Svetlana rolled her eyes. “Robin, you’re the only person in the world who would have such a ridiculous idea, that beauty makes you forget about love.”
Svetlana had four suitcases and we were among the last to exit customs. There was no sign of Ivan or his girlfriend. Emmanuel, a handsome middle-aged friend of Bill’s father, picked us up in a minivan. He didn’t speak English. I was the only one who didn’t speak French. I could tell that Bill’s French wasn’t great, and Svetlana’s was really good.
Emmanuel left us at his daughter Jeanne’s apartment in the Marais. We were going to spend a few days there, while Jeanne was in Brittany with her boyfriend, until Svetlana’s aunt Bojana could fly over from Belgrade and let us into her place.
Robin and Bill took Jeanne’s bedroom; Svetlana and I shared the futon in the living room. The futon was bright green, with a lemon-yellow quilt and orange cushions.
“I find this apartment very intimidating,” Svetlana said. “Jeanne is only twenty but she already has a taste.”
“What makes you think that?” Bill said. “The fact that she has a boyfriend and you don’t?”
“That’s not the point,” Svetlana said.
While they were arguing, I lay on the futon and fell asleep. But Svetlana shook my arm and said we had to go out and get some sunlight, to regulate our biological clocks.
“You mean our internal clocks,” said Bill. “Biological clock is what makes you start thinking about having a baby.”
We trudged to the Tuileries park, sat on iron chaises-longues, and stared at the fountain, which was full of ducks. It seemed very remarkable that you could travel halfway around the world and still end up looking at some ducks.
“We have to stay awake,” said Svetlana. “We have to think of some kind of narrative.”
When we woke up, more than an hour later, Svetlana, Robin, and Bill had all gotten sunburned. My sunglasses had left big pale circles around my eyes.
We walked to Saint-Germain and ate omelets. The powerful watery mustard made you intensely aware of the area behind your nose. We spread it on the baguette they gave you for free, and ate it till tears ran down our faces.
There was no shower at Jeanne’s apartment, just a bath. You dumped water on your head out of a metal pot.
Everyone else was asleep by eleven-thirty. I wandered around, looked at Jeanne’s bookshelves, stood on the balcony, wondered who Boris Vian was, drank glasses of water, memorized the numbers one through twenty in Teach Yourself Hungarian, and started writing a letter to Ralph, who was interning for his congressman. In Washington, I know, you will just be drinking your after-dinner coffee, and the summer light will continue for perhaps another two hours, I wrote, in what was meant to be the voice of Oleg Cassini. Frankly, my sangfroid has deserted me.
? ? ?
I lay beside Svetlana on the futon and tugged at the free end of the quilt. She was bundled up as tightly as some kind of mollusk. After a while, I gave up and tried to sleep anyway. I couldn’t sleep.
The closets contained many articles—liquor bottles, brandy snifters, cases of cigarettes, folding chairs, skis, tennis rackets, and a sewing machine, among others—but none that could be construed in even the broadest sense as a blanket.
I lay back down, tugged harder at the quilt, and eventually secured a section large enough to lie under. But the moment I relaxed my hold, Svetlana rolled away with a reproachful murmur and reabsorbed my gains. I started to feel really depressed. It was like she didn’t even know me anymore. I wondered if Ivan was asleep. It was terrible to think that he was in this city, possibly very nearby, but I couldn’t see him or talk to him because he didn’t love me. I couldn’t be with him for one minute, not even for the weird leftover hours that nobody else wanted, like from one to three a.m. on a Wednesday. There it sat on the desk, a few feet over my head, reflecting a streetlamp: the Parisian telephone, one of millions, on which Ivan would not call me.
I tried to think positive thoughts. Only one thought brought me comfort, and it was: What is man.