Dreams of Bread and Fire (8 page)

Ani lifted the fur and hung it in the closet.

Tacey asked brightly, “You want to have a nightcap?”

“How about I make you a cup of tea?” Ani offered. She was hoping that Tacey wouldn’t turn out to be either a mean or a maudlin drunk.

Tacey followed Ani to the kitchen. “You know, John has no idea about life, Ani. He sits at his desk, insulated from the world by his lackeys. He doesn’t know how to talk to the fellow who parks the car, let alone his daughter. It’s sad, really.”

Ani filled the kettle from the tap and set it on the stove.

Tacey slumped into a chair at the table. “You’re lucky, Ani. You had a bad boyfriend, but you didn’t marry him, did you? When I was your age, I was already married. Mrs. John Barton. Did I ever tell you the secret of a successful marriage?”

“No, you didn’t,” Ani replied, sitting down across from Tacey.

Tacey leaned forward and whispered dramatically, “The secret of a successful marriage is that the man has to love the woman more.”

“Why is that?” Ani asked, not sure she wanted to hear the response.

“Isn’t it obvious? Otherwise the asshole is feeling up his secretary and treating you like a doormat.”

Ani didn’t say anything.

Tacey continued. “When you get married you start out dewy and fresh and full of hope. His comments are amusing and his gestures are sweet. Then as the years go by his jokes turn mean. And the way he flicks the dandruff from his shoulders makes you want to crack him over the head with a golf iron.”

Ani heard the wall clock click from one minute to the next.

“Jesus.” Tacey sighed, her face suddenly haggard. “I’m so goddamned tired.”

a lost rope is always long

Sitting in the first-class compartment of the train, Ani rode the metro to its far northern end. If the police checked her ticket she would pretend not to speak French and play the ignorant American. Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. It rankled her notions of democracy that there should be separate classes in the subway. It also appalled her that people were required to show identity cards if the cops requested them. It was one thing to be asked for a driver’s license if you were in a car, but the notion of having to produce official documents for merely ambulating in public was bizarre. No one had yet requested to see either her
carte de séjour
or her passport. This ordeal seemed reserved primarily for young men whose skin tones ran to shades of brown: copper, cocoa, and coffee.

Ani walked the last half mile to the university at Saint-Denis. There was a network of star professors whose seminars and lectures American university students flocked to in a kind of cerebral tourism. She had vowed not to do it herself, but here she was, making the pilgrimage to Saint-Denis to hear Professeur Julien Cafard, the renowned philosopher. Both Zed and Sondage made frequent reference to Cafard’s work—they belonged to the same intellectual constellation—so Ani felt compelled to hear the great man’s words coming out of his own mouth.

Thirty minutes before the seminar began students jammed the classroom, standing along the walls when all the seats at the tables were taken. Julien Cafard entered, surrounded by an entourage of acolytes. The white-haired professor chain-smoked his way through a lecture on Truth while Ani jotted down phrases she hoped were at the heart of his argument. Suddenly Cafard stopped mid-sentence and went into a spasm of ragged coughing.

The student next to Ani whispered into her ear, “He has only one lung. Philosophy is a cruel mistress.”

Ani glanced at her neighbor. With enormous dark eyes and a drooping mustache under a prominent nose, he looked like a reincarnation of Marcel Proust. At the end of the lecture he introduced himself as Philippe and invited Ani to come to his home for tea. His place was only a short walk from the campus so Ani agreed.

The apartment’s shutters were drawn, thick drapes covered most of the windows, and the wallpaper was ruby red. The place had a dark womblike atmosphere. Philippe, switching on an antique floor lamp over which hung a red silk shawl, explained that he suffered from severe asthma, hence the sealed windows. There were two side chairs in the room, a box spring leaning against one wall, and towering stacks of gray cardboard egg crates.

“What are those for?” Ani asked, gesturing at the egg cartons.

“Follow me,” he said.

They went into the next room, which was dominated by a large bed with a red velvet headboard. An upright piano stood nearby. Overhead, the ceiling was lined with egg crates.

“The neighbors complain about my piano, so I put up the cartons against the noise. Let me play for you,” Philippe said.

He settled himself onto the piano bench as though he were in a concert hall. He closed his eyes and began awkwardly to play a Satie nocturne. His nostrils dilated, his brow furrowed, and when a black forelock fell over his face he tossed his head like a stallion.

Freezing his hands above the keys, Philippe gazed at Ani with longing.

He breathed, “
Je suis fou. Je veux follement te faire l’amour.
”

Then he flung himself at her.

Just as they were getting each other’s clothes undone, Philippe leaped up shouting, “
Mon dieu!
I’m late for my job.”

Hurriedly buttoning his shirt, Philippe hustled her out of the apartment. When he asked for her coordinates, she gave him a number that was correct except for the final numeral. With any luck she would never see him again.

On the metro home, Ani marveled at how close she had been to having sex with a complete stranger, and a completely bizarre stranger at that. Only the guy’s eccentric behavior had brought a halt to their ill-advised encounter. And it was Asa’s fault, the foul betrayer. She thought of his narrow face and his slightly calloused hands. She had loved those hands most of all.

Men started buzzing around like flies, although Ani felt more like carrion than honey. Was she sending out secret signals of which she herself was unaware? When a medical student from Pau followed her home one afternoon, she agreed to go out with him that night to hear Argentinean music. He corrected her French and droned on about the details of his family’s prune farm. She lied and said she didn’t have a telephone. Then he lurked outside the back door several days in a row until Ani told him to get lost.

She went on a miserable date with a Greek actor who showed her his portfolio of head shots. She sat in a café with a disheveled Polish painter who told her that American culture was primitive but that he loved the enthusiasm of American women. She disliked the glint in his eye when he pronounced the word
enthusiasm
. She didn’t sleep with any of them.

Ani and Michael went to see
The Philadelphia Story
at a cinema near the Odéon. After the movie a chill wind blew bits of newspaper and trash along the boulevard. They went to a nearby café for a hot drink. Then Michael invited her to his place to play backgammon. She had played the game with her grandfather a few times—he called it
tavloo.

They sat on the bed in Michael’s one-room apartment—it was a real apartment, though, with its own bathroom and minuscule kitchen—and he set out the pieces. He beat her twice and then let her win the third time. It was getting late and they both knew she’d miss the last metro if she didn’t leave soon. They set up for another round.

Michael executed his next move on the board as he said casually, “You know, you can stay here tonight if you want. There’s a new toothbrush in the medicine cabinet.”

She went to the bathroom and put in the diaphragm she had impulsively thrown in her bag.

After she slid between the sheets of Michael’s bed the sex happened fast, without any conversation. His body was foreign and unfamiliar. She was afraid to look at his face. Now she understood what Elena had meant when she asked if sex was better with Asa or with Will. It had generally been good with both of them, but sex with Michael wasn’t good at all. Odd how the mechanics of the thing could be more or less the same, but the sensations so different. Did this mean he was a bad lover or did it mean that they made a dismal combination?

Thankfully, it was over soon enough and she settled her head into the crook of his arm. The mood was companionable despite the stale sex. It occurred to her that he was probably as lonely in this foreign city as she was.

Michael fell asleep and Ani listened to his slow, steady breath.

If two lie together, then they have heat: but how can one be warm alone
?

She drifted into sleep feeling calmer than she had in days.

In the morning, Michael insisted on accompanying her home on the metro. He kissed the back of her hand as they sat watching the stations go by. She could barely meet his gaze.

She was worried that she might have ruined their friendship. Companions were hard to come by in Paris. Aside from Michael, Ani had one prospective friend, a woman in her modern dance class. Even though Tacey and Sydney filled her hours, they weren’t exactly comrades. Would she still be able to go to the movies with Michael after this?

After Michael left her at her door, she ascended to her silent room. She followed a rectangle of sun as it inched across her bed. She listened to the slow slide of her breath. In its rhythm she heard the echoes of a favorite poem.

You may have all things from me, save my breath,

The slight life in my throat will not give pause

For your love, nor your loss, nor any cause. . . .

Asa Willard had emptied her pocket. He had stripped the walls. He had taken a hacksaw to her leg and amputated it above the ankle. She would hobble around, remembering what it was like to walk on two good feet.

Even at the worst moments with Asa—when she was scared or he was deliberately unkind—she had never been bored.

The previous summer they had hitchhiked across the country to Seattle, stopping in Boulder for a few days, where they had climbed one of the Flatirons. Sure, Ani was afraid of heights and had panicked during the crux move of the climb, but at the end it was worth it. They had feasted under the blue banner of the sky at the top of the world. Hawks had circled around so close that Ani felt as though she could have touched a tail feather. When would she ever do something like that again?

The day after their climb, a friend of Asa’s had dropped them off outside the Rio Grande freight train yard in Denver, where they had sneaked past the
NO TRESPASSING
signs. The sky was overcast and it began to drizzle. Train whistles blew sharp and high over the desolate yard. Ani and Asa pulled rain ponchos from their packs and crouched between the fence and some rusted red boxcars. Nearby a dirty triple-decker was loaded with new American sedans streaked with dust. Tracks stretched into the distance.

Asa whispered, You wait here while I scope out the scene.

He was tense and wired for action, as though they were partisans about to blow up a bridge ahead of an occupying army.

Our mission depends on you, Asa Willard, Ani whispered back.

Crouching low, he trotted into the dark.

Two minutes later a watchman ambled by holding a large flashlight. When he aimed its stark beam on Ani, she had visions of spending the night in the Denver jail.

Where are you headed? he asked, not unkindly.

Salt Lake, Ani replied.

You’re not alone here, are you, young lady? the watchman asked with concern.

My boyfriend’s looking for the next train out, she explained.

The man gestured to a line of cars several tracks over. That’ll be the jackrabbit to Salt Lake. He nodded at Ani and went back to his rounds.

When Asa returned he said, Damn. I have no idea which train we should take.

Ani pointed. That one over there is the jackrabbit to Salt Lake.

How do you know that? he asked skeptically.

The bull told me.

Ani and Asa crept alongside the train until they located an open boxcar door and clambered in. The yard lights cast a parallelogram of brightness on the grimy wooden floor. They found several large sheets of heavy cardboard and pulled them to one end of the car. As they were settling into their corner two figures climbed in.

Hello, people, said a tall lean man. He was wearing soiled jeans and a denim work shirt rolled to the elbows. Don’t mind if we share the accommodations, do you?

No problem at all, Asa responded. He stood and pulled Ani to her feet.

This here is Ray, the taller one said, pointing to his short sidekick, and I’m Wiley. Ray bobbed his head while Wiley extended his hand.

Asa shook Wiley’s hand. I’m Asa. This is Ani.

Wiley’s face cracked into a smile that cried out for a dentist. I haven’t seen a girl riding the rails in a good long time.

As the train rattled out of the yard, the men set up in the opposite end of the car while Asa and Ani retreated to theirs. The train picked up speed, dashing along the tracks.