Dreams of Bread and Fire (21 page)

When Ani slipped in, Van was sitting on the couch reading
Libération,
the table lamp beside him shedding a circle of light in the otherwise dim room. This picture was transported immediately into the house of Ani’s memories—the particular quality of the lamplight, the serious concentration on Van’s handsome face, the sense of possession it gave her to find him waiting for her.

Van looked up at her with panther-dark eyes and she felt a whirlpool spin behind her ribs down through her belly and below. She didn’t want to talk about anything at all. . . .

Hunger drove them out into the world after sundown the next day. They went to a bistro on the rue des Petits Champs. Van turned Ani’s palm up on the table. He traced her lifeline, which wrapped itself around the mound of her thumb almost to her wrist.

“You have a long life ahead of you, Ani. I’d guess you’ll live to be ninety years old.”

“Can I see yours?” Ani asked.

He turned his palm up, placing his fingers over hers.

“Is this it?” she asked, running her finger along a crease in his open hand. She wanted to pull his fingers to her lips.

“That’s it. Not long, not short. But I don’t really believe in this stuff,” he said. “Maro was into palmistry and tea leaves. You’re more sensible than that, aren’t you, Ani?”

“Sure. My superstitions are random. Except for believing that dreams are messages.”

“Messages from whom?” he asked.

“Messages from yourself,” she told him.

They were up late on Saturday night and slept until noon. Why put clothes on when you could lie around under the sheets with books and a bottle of mineral water to pass back and forth? Ani opened the final volume of Proust while Van read Fanon. Every now and then one of them would read a line out loud.

On Monday, Ani readied herself for the morning routine chez Barton. While Van stuffed his duffel he told her he was going out of town for work for a few days. His tone was casual, but the news had the same effect on Ani as a window shade unexpectedly snapping open. After the initial start from the noise there was the moment of adjustment as stark light poured in the window.

A trip. A business trip. What kind of business? And under what name are you traveling, Mr. Ardavanian?

Attempting to sound equally casual, Ani asked, “Where are you going?”

“Belgium.”

“Are you taking the train?”

“Driving with a friend.”

His sentences were clipped and telegraphic.

“Are you going with Hratch?” she asked.

“No. Another friend.” He hefted the duffel to his shoulder. “So. I’ll see you Friday night?”

“Friday night? I’m not sure. I might be busy on Friday.” Her tone was chill.

He dropped the bag to the floor and turned to face her. “Give me a break, Ani. It’s my job.”

Ani blurted out, “And what exactly is your job, Mr. Yannis Antoniades?”

She watched as awareness spread across his face. Following seconds behind was wrath.

“You shouldn’t have done that, Ani. You shouldn’t have gone through my stuff. How am I going to trust you if you do things like that?”

“How are you going to trust
me
? You’re the one with the false passport.”

“Listen, Ani, I work for a relief agency. I have to travel all over. I go to Israel, Lebanon, and Syria. You can’t use the same passport.”

“What exactly is your job description?”

He glanced at his watch. “Shit, Ani. I don’t have time for this. Can we talk on Friday?”

“Are you a drug dealer?” Ani asked.

Van laughed, his face suddenly sunny. “Is that what you’re worried about? Listen, Ani, look at me. Do you really think I’m a drug dealer?”

“No. I guess not. But there are a lot of things you aren’t telling me, Van. I know that much.”

“Ani, I promise, when the time is right, we’ll talk. Trust me.”

“I’m supposed to trust you?” she asked.

“That’s right,” he told her firmly.

The next day Ani dialed the
ARAA
number again. This time a woman answered the phone and gave Ani the office’s hours of operation. A half hour later Ani entered a cobbled courtyard on a narrow street in the Ninth
Arrondissement. She climbed a flight of worn wooden stairs and knocked on a heavy door with a gold knob in its center.

“
Entrez,
” a woman’s voice called from inside.

Ani opened the door and stepped into a small cramped office where two desks were squeezed into the corner and bookcases lined the other walls. One of the desks was empty and at the other sat an Armenian woman in a brown cardigan and a beige dress. She reminded Ani of the organist at her grandmother’s church. Her raven hair was set in waves around her head, and her jet eyebrows were plucked into sleek arches.

“May I help you?” she asked Ani.

“I just wanted to look around. I was curious about your organization.”

“We have offices in six countries. We help Armenian refugees and immigrants. There are difficulties sometimes with the papers. Or with finding work or permanent lodging. We have a network of churches and businesspeople to go to for assistance. We also have a library of books in Armenian that people can borrow. Over there are back issues of our newsletter.” She pointed to a bookcase full of yellowing periodicals. “Are you Armenian?”

“My mother’s Armenian.”

“Where are you from?”

“The States. Watertown.”

The woman’s face softened. “Watertown? I have cousins there. The Mardigians? You know them? They live on School Street.”

“I don’t know them, but my grandparents probably do. They know everybody.”

“Where are your grandparents from?”

“My grandmother’s from Mersin. My grandfather’s from Marash.”

“My people are from Erzurum.”

Ani had no idea where any of these places were on the map or how far Marash was from Erzurum. For Armenians, being from one place or another seemed to signify something about what kind of life your people had lived because of geography and climate. The same way that to say you were from Watertown meant one thing and to say you were from Fresno meant another.

“Do you work here alone?” Ani asked. She wanted to find out if the second desk was Van’s.

“I’m the only full-time employee. We have a few part-time people and some volunteers.”

So Van didn’t work here—at least not full-time. She wondered if he was even on the payroll. Should she ask the woman what Van did here? Then when he got back from Belgium he’d find out that she had been snooping.

How am I going to trust you, Ani?

Damn.

She wished she had time to sit down and read through some of the newsletters, but she was due at Sondage’s seminar in half an hour.

On Friday night the Bartons reached home earlier than usual. Van hadn’t yet arrived and Ani was worried that he would ring the front bell. Instead of returning to her room she sat on the step outside the marble entrance hall with its gilt and crystal chandelier. She was wearing a sweater, but hours after the sun had gone down the stone was cold. She wrapped her arms around her legs and put her head to her knees, willing Van to appear.

Vhat you doing, you crazy girl? Sitting outside freezing you
vorik?

That was Grandma’s voice. Ani smiled. She was freezing her
vorik
with only a thin cotton skirt and her
vardik
underneath.

And Baba? What would Baba say? He’d come up with some gnomic phrase.

When Ani was in the third grade the teacher had required everyone to stand in a circle and hold hands while they spouted adages.
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. A stitch in time saves nine. A penny saved is a penny earned.
Ani tried to bring new and unusual ones, polling her family for suggestions. Violet had proposed a few that had gone over well with the teacher. Grandma’s offerings, however, tended toward inappropriate Bible verses, such as
A virtuous woman
is
a crown to her husband
:
but she that maketh ashamed
is
as rottenness in his bones
. Ani knew enough not to repeat this at school.

The first time Ani offered the class a Baba saying she could tell by the look on the teacher’s face that it was a failure.
If you are overly happy, go to the cemetery; if you are overly sad, still go to the cemetery.

What does that mean, Baba?

You’ve got to think about it,
anoushig
. Use the brain God gave you.

For someone who’s supposed to be so smart, you have no common sense, young lady, Violet chimed in.

It wasn’t fair to have her mother say only that.

I saw your friend Lucy Sevanian the other day at the post office. She asked after you. She told me she’s expecting a baby in June. Her husband is that nice Kevorkian boy from Belmont. Do you remember him? The one with the red sports car.

That was something Violet had put in her last letter to Ani. She had also written,
We are all looking forward to seeing you very soon.

Ani would be leaving Paris for home in four weeks. Then in September she would be a small wooden boat setting forth on a great wide sea. At least she didn’t have to worry about where she would be living in New York. Elena had reserved a room for her in her university apartment.

What place did Van Ardavanian have in any of this? He hadn’t said another word about returning to Boston with her, and she hadn’t the nerve to ask him. She tried to keep within the borders of a narrow garden bed, yanking up weedy expectations as they grew. She fought off fantasies of an ordinary life with him: dishes in the sink, potted plants on the sills, evening news in the shared bed. Love was a dandelion growing from a crack in the pavement, with fierce green leaves and an improbable sunshine of a flower. More likely, though, Van would vanish wraithlike into the mysterious world of Armenian refugees, bullet-pocked landscapes, and false passports.

“What are you doing out here?”

She looked up. Van had materialized before her, solid as a stone pillar.

“Come on.” He pulled her to her feet.

When he put his arms around her and she leaned into him, without warning she began to cry.

“It’s okay, Ani. Everything’s okay,” Van reassured her.

Nothing was okay, though. Sadness welled up inside her like a spring creek flooded by rain. Cold gray water churned over rocks, sweeping along twigs, leaves, and old losses, large and small.

“Come on, let’s go inside. We’ll make some tea.” He led her to the back entrance of the building, taking the keys from her chill fingers.

By the time they reached her room her breath came in ragged gulps, but the tears had stopped. She went to the washbasin and splashed water on her face. In the mirror she saw an ugly fish with swollen eyes and a down-turned mouth.

Van came up behind her and put his hand on her shoulder. “The tea’s ready.”

“Okay.” She dried her face with a hand towel.

“I missed you,” he said.

She stared at him in the mirror. What made this any different from the running, chasing game she had played with Asa for three years? The bereft waiting and the fear she felt were the same.
Maybe, Ani, the similarity is more about you than it is about either of them.
That thought was like peering out a porthole at a storm-lashed sea.

She turned and when his arms enfolded her, drawing her in, it felt like refuge. As long as she stayed in the present—the pressure of his fingers on the small of her back, the sound of his breath in her ear—everything was okay.

The next night they ate at a small Vietnamese place in Beaubourg. Ani wasn’t feeling particularly talkative—she had been quiet most of the day—and Van took up some of the conversational slack.

When his espresso arrived he asked her, “Do you ever think, Ani, about the voyage this coffee has made to get here?”

“You mean from the kitchen to the table?” she asked.

“From beans grown thousands of miles from here to the drink in this cup. What country do you think they’re from? Colombia?”

“I guess.”

“Do you have any idea what a Colombian coffee picker’s life is like?”

“From your tone, I’m guessing it’s pretty wonderful.”

“I’ll spare you the details. I look at the waiter here and think about the American war in Vietnam and the decades of French colonialism that preceded it. What happened to his family? How did he get here and who was lost or left behind? And even your red cotton shirt, Ani. When I look at it I’m reminded of cotton workers suffering from brown lung.”

“So everything’s contaminated?” Ani asked.