The Wedding of Anna F. (6 page)

Since the birthday caterers might be arriving soon with all their noisiness and their foil pans, I suggest that we go upstairs to my study. I pick up my red scarf left on the bench along the way and wrap it around my neck. The afternoon is fading, falling fast. Outside, through the windows, the old barn is gray, a dense cube catching the sun. The gravel driveway is still empty. No sign of Maia, who should be coming back at any moment now. In fact, shouldn’t she already be here?

“Forgive me for lingering, Mr. Bardawil, but I’m looking for my assistant. We’ve had so much to do, recently, that I’ve given her a break in town. I’ve been organizing my papers into an archive, and she’s been carrying the boxes to the barn. Now that it’s going to be clear who I was, or who I am, I feel the need to get organized, because everything that I have, all my records, are going to be important. For the future. But it’s starting to feel like a task that will never get done. I’m sure Maia feels that way too.”

“Yes,” he says politely.

“There are so many letters, for instance. I hardly know what to do with them all. It seems vanity to keep each one. And yet I have to do it, don’t I? Because they will be important. And because sometimes cleaning house doesn’t mean getting rid of things, but gathering them in.” I take one more look out the window. Where, where is that girl? I feel suddenly anxious without her. “The trouble for me,” I say, distracted, “has been to decide, really, how much space to take up in a library. Because I’m sure that’s what will be wanted.”

The letters. Files. The bulk of me. Of what happened to me, after. In boxes stored in the barn. And in cabinets, the business correspondence from my practice. And in my study and other rooms, personal letters, which have been harder to read and go over, because sometimes it takes a while for each one to make sense without having a copy of the letters I sent that prompted them. In one he wrote to me:

Yes, I’ve received yours. It is difficult for me, very difficult for me to understand why you still don’t understand that while my work means a great deal to me, it is not everything to me as yours seems to be to you. It seems odd, in a woman. I need to go where I can do and be of some use, yes, of course, that’s true. My work here in the Middle East is of some use to the world, I hope. But what is the use of doing anything productive, anything draining, if we don’t have a place of rest, a cup of companionship that we can drink from again and again? I’m sorry, my work here isn’t letting me write much, but I think it only right to remind you as I already have so many times that it’s no sin if two human beings decide to make themselves a point of each other’s consideration. I don’t know what it is that makes it impossible for you to come and be with me. There are times that I feel I’m done trying to wring myself inside out trying to figure it out. We’re both getting older. You keep stringing me on. We have to come to terms. If you have something to add to this please send it through the bureau, with all my love…

In another:

I’m beginning to think we should really leave things just as they are, and not as this constant exchange of words. You say you’re anxious when we’re apart but you grow stiff and strained when we’re together. Do you remember that day when we were walking in the Park, and I asked you what I had done that kept you pushing me away. I asked you, had I committed a murder, or taken another lover, or what was this imaginary crime that I’d committed? And you turned red and looked at the ground and you didn’t answer. I had hoped you were testing your feelings just then. Coming to your senses, seeing how far you would let them go. But no, you looked up and you said something, laughing, you said that you just needed more time to get used to my smells, and I needed more time to get used to yours… And I didn’t believe for one minute you were telling me the truth… And then it struck me—and it’s never left me since—that in spite of everything I’ve tried to reveal to you about myself, and my honesty with you, you doubt my own sense of self-knowledge. That I really do love you just as you are. Missing pieces and all. It doesn’t, it shouldn’t matter. We should just soldier on and see what happens…but then I wonder, will we ever cover more ground than we’ve already covered?

Another:

Just a quick card to let you know I’ve received yours but I’m headed to Buenos Aires in a few hours and don’t have time to respond at length the way I’d like to. We can talk when I get back, all right, let’s have dinner the way normal middle-aged friends tend to do with drinks before and after and all that, all right? Much love.

And:

I hope this finds you well. I found this postcard at a stall in front of the Duomo. Not far from the coast. I love the Italians. Be well. Much love.

And:

Yes, I find it interesting, too, the slow evolution, or rather devolution, of our bodies. I guess we’ll have to discuss it at length, one of these days. Maybe next time I’m in the city. It is good to be alive, though, don’t you think? I do. Time is the honor of being overlooked by the devil. Since you ask, Haifa was hot, crowded, and commercialized. I’m sitting here sweating at a café table, so unbecoming. Next stop Tel Aviv. No, don’t worry, it’s dangerous everywhere. Be well. Love.

And later:

Do you remember that time, years ago, when we drove out to Cape Cod and window-shopped for houses? When you finally said you would marry me? And we looked at that tiny cottage with the deck overlooking the bay. We seemed perfectly able, didn’t we, to agree on something, finally. I still remember how we had that agent drive us out and take us up and stand with us on the balcony looking out, and had her open all the doors on the appliances for us, and go boringly on about all the plumbing work and electrical business, and let her compliment us on our happiness, like we were newlyweds—and all the while, let’s face it, we were fooling her. My mind drifts back, sometimes, to that shingled, lost house. And then I wonder—what if? But no. We fobbed her off, that realtor. And then we were having dinner after, and whatever crab you were having was covered in sauce, and you had it all over your face and hands, and you were calling the waiter for another steamed towel, but I didn’t wait, I put my hands on both sides of your face and kissed you, rubbing us both in it, and we were all alone in that dark booth, and I started to slide my hand down your neck, just a little, and I said, God, I think I’ll just throw you over the side of this table and drown you in butter, you need to be drowned with my love, but you pulled away from me and said, You would never say that to HER, and I said who? and you said, the kind of woman you should be living with, a woman from Connecticut. And I still have absolutely no idea what you meant, and I’ve never understood it, and I will never understand what you meant, who you were talking about, and why you got so angry… What is even harder to remember, but what I don’t fear to remember, because it’s us, such as we are, or such as we were, is that in the parking lot, you pushed me away again with your words, though I wanted nothing but to take you back to the hotel, and you said, I am not a story, I am not a patient, you have no right to me, and then you swore… I know you don’t like to be reminded of such coarseness, but if you are going to ask why I haven’t written lately, Hannah, it seems only fair and honest to remind you. There is only so much grease in the fire a man can take.

I don’t know if I could find that lost, shingled house again on my own, but if I do I think I’ll go back to that restaurant, sometime, when I’m back on the coast, if I get the chance, and see if by dint of effort I can locate again that hole in the universe that allowed us to imagine something peaceful, for a moment. I will write again when I get back from Lebanon. Yes, it is a bit dangerous. No, don’t worry. Be well, old girl. Love.

*

I’M STILL LOOKING OUT at the dry bone of the barn. But what luck, here comes Maia, pulling in across the gravel drive in her bright blue compact car. She is, without question, a responsible, fine, sturdy, upstanding woman. One you can trust. The kind of person who can always be counted on to do the right thing. No need for me to ever have worried or even to have imagined for an instant that she was going to be late.

“Mr. Bardawil,” I gesture toward the banister, “would you go up while I take just a moment to catch up with my assistant? You can make yourself comfortable up there. My study is the first door to the right when you reach the top landing. Have a look around, at anything you like. There are pictures and placards and things on the walls, things that might help you.”

“All right, but—”

A brief exchange of looks between the two of them as Maia comes in. A blunt, sexual sizing up. Ah, the young. He turns away.

When he’s gone, I ask her:

“Did you have a nice break, Maia? Are you feeling rested?”

“I did and do.” She opens the hall closet and tosses her bag in, as she always does. “I had some lunch and checked your e-mail while I was there. Also I checked the weather for you. It’s shaping up to be a nice evening. Your friends are going to have a beautiful drive up from the city. Oh, and what else, let’s see. More birthday snail mail in your P.O. box.” She holds out a packet. “Do you want it now?”

“Later is fine.” No more letters. No.

She lifts her heavy chin, pointing upstairs. “I thought he’d be long done by now. What have you two been talking about all this time?”

“Oh, legal matters. You know. And he’s been telling me about his travels,” I say, breezy. “Can you take care of everything down here if we’re not finished by the time my first guest arrives?”

“I don’t like the sound of that, Hannah. You shouldn’t be going on for so long, and you know it. You’ll wear yourself out. You know how you forget things when that happens, how you start thinking things that are a little… Don’t make me get all worried about you, now, okay?”

Big-hearted thing. I’ve missed her. “I’ll be fine, Maia. I like the boy. I even thought we should invite him to the party. It might be exactly the right thing to do.” And maybe, I can admit it now, what I’ve been planning all along. So we can announce my true identity together. To the surprise and delight of my friends.

“Just don’t let him suck the life out of you, is all I’m saying. ABDs can do that.”

“Oh, I can keep going as long as I need to.”

“Mm-hmm. That’s like saying the tree can keep going while you chop some firewood.”

I turn my deaf ear to her.

*

CLIMBING UP THE POLISHED stairway is harder for me in the afternoons than it is in the mornings. I have to pull the banister toward me in a slow tug-of-war. Then have to wait for a minute on the first landing to catch my breath. From here I can look up and see half of him inside my study, not in silhouette, as when he first came, but sharply defined and slightly wrinkled at the back from already having sat so long with me. A handsome angel looking over my bookshelves. My diplomas. The various tributes for my charity work. When I sold the family properties I had, I gave most of the money away. I have always wanted to do good in this world.

I feel my heart thumping at the sudden change in level. I wait a moment at the top landing. Take another breath. All right. Ready to go.

“Finding anything good?” I smile and walk in.

“You’ve got some very fine history books here.” He turns to me. “About the war period and after.”

“Yes. Some of those were my father’s. The books in Yiddish were my mother’s.”

“But no copy of the—ah—diary?”

“Not here. I keep it beside my bed.” That’s where diaries belong.
The sun is shining, the sky is deep blue, there is a lovely breeze and I’m longing—so longing—for everything…

I go behind my desk because that’s where I’m most comfortable in this room. I gesture. “Have a seat. I was obsessed with history and the law for a long time, as you can see. I wanted to understand the relationship between time and the law, between history and what is legal, what is allowed. Those are some of my books from my student days, over there. You have to treasure your student days. There’s nothing like them.” That infant time long before you know all you will ever know.

He slides his hips into the leather chair in front of me. Of course Maia wouldn’t like him; he’s not meaty enough for her. I move the birthday flowers, the wild lilies and delphiniums some of my old clients have sent me, so that they don’t block my view of him. The light from the curtained window behind me slants, hitting him on the chest.

He pushes his recording phone forward again.

“So we were up to where, you say, you left the Displaced Persons camp.”

“Yes. And I was making my way through Allied-occupied Germany. The summer of 1945. And there I joined the Berihah movement.
Berihah
. You might not be familiar with the word? It means ‘organized escape.’”

“I am familiar with it.”

“Oh.”

I wish I had a cigarette, suddenly, like in the old days. I really do wish, all at once, that he was Scottish, the way I’d thought he’d be.
Bide a while with me.
He might not like what I’m going to have to say. He might become offended again, or even hostile, and then he might not want to believe me and will try to class me with others, the Anastasias, or maybe the Shirley MacLaines. But it shouldn’t matter.
Bardawil
. Not if he’s a just soul. The truth is only what happened. There is no turning back from it. The truth is an unchanging future, made in the past.

*

I FOUND MY WAY into a German field, and there, at dusk, I dug myself into a haystack, out of the cold. I pulled my weight in after me, closing the hay behind me, but also leaving it partly open so I could breathe and look out, if I needed to, to see the first, glistening stars. The color of the sky was the color of an iris fading…

No wind or breeze. Not even a cricket stirred. The haystack seemed fresh, but after a while, it stank. Just like our hayfields here upstate.

I was tired, so very tired, and so I started to sleep, in spite of the smell. My shoes sinking like coffins at the ends of my legs. My arms pricked by needles.