Svetlana kept reminding me to finish packing, but then we would think of something we hadn’t talked about yet. Soon it was two in the morning. “You should really pack,” Svetlana said. “Wake me up before you go.”
It took me until four to get everything into the suitcase. I went onto the balcony, lit a cigarette, and looked at the museum, wondering whether it would still be there in a thousand years. When would it not be there anymore? I took a last bath in Bojana’s claw-foot tub, put on a new navy-blue button-down dress that my mother had given me, drank a cup of Nescafé, and ate some bread. At ten to five, I patted Svetlana on the shoulder.
Within ten seconds of getting out of bed, Svetlana had noticed a sweatshirt and a book I’d forgotten. “Just think of all the other things you must have left here,” she said.
“If you find anything, just throw it out,” I said. “Don’t carry anything to Italy.”
“Don’t forget to call me in Belgrade.”
She helped me into the elevator with my suitcase and I pulled the accordion gate between us. The elevator started to sink and sink.
Outside, it smelled of early morning. A green street-cleaning truck drove by, spraying water and brushing the sidewalks.
The car, a white Renault, pulled up almost immediately.
“Selin!” someone called from the sky. Svetlana was standing on the balcony in Bojana’s kimono. “You forgot your slippers!” She threw my flip-flops, wrapped in a Monoprix bag, over the balcony. They almost hit the head of the driver, who was opening the trunk. Svetlana was still waving from the balcony when the taxi pulled away. “Farewell!” she called in Russian. “Farewell!”
? ? ?
On the plane, a flight attendant came around with newspapers. All the adults were reading them. I took one, too. From the International Herald Tribune, I learned that a ninety-five-hundred-pound elephant called Kika had been artificially inseminated in Berlin. The sperm had been taken from two male elephants and there was no way of knowing for certain which was the real father, but zoologists favored Jumbo of Cleveland. Jumbo’s sperm had been flown to Berlin in a tiny cooler that was “hand-checked” at airport security, because X-rays would have killed the sperm. So, that’s what newspapers were about.
The crossword puzzle was called “Zooropa.” “Asiatic mammal visits the Bois de Boulogne?” But that’s me. I felt a hand on my shoulder, and looked up to see a man with eyeglasses tied to his head with pink string. “If you need any help with that, ask me,” he said. “I just finished it.”
? ? ?
It can be really exasperating to look back at your past. What’s the matter with you? I want to ask her, my younger self, shaking her shoulder. If I did that, she would probably cry. Maybe I would cry, too. It would be like one of those Marguerite Duras books I tried to read in Svetlana’s aunt’s apartment.
Elle pleure.
Il pleure.
Ils pleurent, tous les deux.
? ? ?
I spent most of the Brussels stopover in the duty-free store, liquidating my last French francs. I thought about buying a gift for Ivan, but what? They were giving out free samples of Campari. I tried one. I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to drink something that tasted like that. For a while, the thought of buying Ivan a necktie was incredibly funny to me. I looked at the ties, trying to tell which was the most tasteful.
At the gate, I sat in front of the windows and tried to read Flaubert’s story “Hérodias.” I couldn’t get past the first sentence: “The citadel of Machaerus stood to the east of the Dead Sea, on a cone-shaped basalt peak.” I read it again and again, but it didn’t seem to mean anything. Outside the window, porters were tossing suitcases like bales of hay. I knew I should have been thinking of things to say to Ivan. But where were the things supposed to come from—from outside my head?
Almost all the passengers on the Budapest flight were men in suits, except for a Hungarian-speaking mother and daughter with matching dour mouths, and a guy with a guitar case who seemed to be asleep standing up, and who had a scruffy, brooding expression that was somehow familiar. I saw him again on the plane as I was looking for my row. He was seated now, but still asleep.
Minutes after takeoff we were already crossing the German border. On the video map the white airplane was simultaneously in Belgium, Holland, and Germany, the first-class cabin nosing toward Cologne, while economy lingered in Liège and one wing grazed Heerlen. Europe was so small. It seemed weird that people took it so seriously.
I took out Teach Yourself Hungarian, read a text about someone called Auntie Mariska, and memorized the phrases “My head hurts,” “It hurts a lot,” and “It hurts terribly.” The text was followed by true-false questions, which Hungarians called igaz-nem questions. It was true that Auntie Mariska had rheumatism, that she considered Budapest to be beautiful but noisy, and that she preferred cognac to winter salami.
“Hey,” said an American voice. I looked up. It was the brooding narcoleptic. “Aren’t you from Peter’s program?” I recognized him then, from the orientation. His name was Owen. He asked how I was getting to Peter’s apartment.
“A friend is meeting me,” I said.
“A friend from Peter’s program?”
“Not really.”
“I just feel like Peter isn’t going to show at the airport. He said he might, but I don’t have a good feeling.”
“Yeah,” I said, nodding.
“Would you be interested in splitting a taxi?” asked Owen.
“I think I’m going with my friend,” I said. There was a silence. “Maybe he can give you a ride, too,” I said, because there didn’t seem to be any other option. The captain announced our descent to the Budapest area. Owen went back to his seat. I didn’t see him again until the line to passport control. It turned out that Owen also studied Russian, and had spent a year teaching English in Siberia. I asked what it had been like. He said it had been cold.
“I don’t see Peter,” Owen said, coming out of the turnstile behind me. But Ivan was there, reading a paperback novel. The book looked so small in his hands, almost unstable, like it might crumble to dust. He had a tan and looked at once different from my memory and unmistakably himself. I was so happy that the first thing I said to him instead of hello was “Thank you.”
“What are you reading?” I asked, patting his arm. He looked up and smiled. He was reading The Joke by Kundera. “I got you a book, too,” he said. “It’s in the car.”
“This is Owen,” I said. “He’s in Peter’s program.”
“Ivan,” said Ivan. The two of them clapped hands in a masculine, almost angry way.