Paris Twilight (43 page)

We walked on through the Village, as beside each other as we'd been before, but pulled away now an increment too, and I wanted us back in the space of the peace that had held us, on the train and along our walk. I was crying out against this wedge of air that had let your thoughts and mine run off apart. And there before the conservatory, listening to the piece that spilled through the window: What possibilities perched on that last bridge of silence? How much of
almost
fell into the time between those notes? I wanted so much to say,
Put down your fiddle. Hold me again.
If you ask, I'll tell you that I love you as I'll never love another, that I was yours and that we were young, so, yes, let's begin. But there was the increment to cross, and the moment passed and the chord landed, and you said, again—it was your second invitation of the night—
Come in, and we'll hear the rest
. But I didn't.

And you went through the doors and I went off, and those several weeks later you showed up in your uniform and your hilarious scary haircut, and we made some talk about what would happen when your tour was up; you seemed content to be going, and resolute, and it all seemed so strange and public, this was a war, there was a war to be fought, for you to fight, and who could get their lives straight with the world demanding so violently into every soft thought? I got your letters, and the announcement of your furlough, coming up soon, and then the call from your mother when the visitors came with the news, and we prepared to see you bedside except that you just didn't give us time, Daniel. And where you went as you lay in that bed, and why you didn't come back, back to me, has been my prison for all these years, until now.

For now I know something I didn't know a month ago. That across the path at the bottom of the well lies a string. And at the location of the string lies decision. And maybe you couldn't have, maybe you knew the damage done and preferred it to be like it is, but I've touched where you were, and I know the step you took. And what I have to tell you, Daniel, is that I have hated myself for a lifetime for your death, and found myself past forgiving. But now I have found forgiveness, at last: I forgive you.

At last I can live in that moment without remorse. For that was my time, Daniel. On the night the stranger steps into my Chemin Vert, that is the moment I'll relate to him, along with the question of what it all meant, how one person's heart can beat for so long in the center of the story of another.

And with that little bit to console me, I will close up this house as soon as I can, and will have the carpenters and the painters come and seal up the wall in the oval room for good, for I think I will have Saxe's apartment spruced up a bit, and the peephole plastered over and the shade taken down and some curtains put up, and maybe have it wired with an outlet or two in case I'd like to plug in a radio. In a certain way, my life has existed longer, more continuously, in that small room than in any other place on earth, and though I'll never meet the man responsible for that, I'd like to keep his room in the family, since family he is, as a pied-à-terre for the occasional trip back to Paris, or in case Corie might find the French at some point hospitable to her return. And I will take some of the money from Saxe's will, a little of what's left over from supporting Céleste, and make a donation to l'École Islamique de Jeunes Filles. This is what I will relish telling Odile tomorrow, when she arrives to take up her recuperation: that I intend to buy the painting from Madame Ralanou, the portrait of the woman on the garden path. I will pay an exorbitant price for it. It will fill the wall over the day bed.

Odile and I have planned a few things to do as she gets stronger. I told her I'd like to go shopping on rue de Rivoli to buy a good pair of traveling shoes. And then we'll go to visit Buttes-Chaumont, to stroll through the park along the paths around the lake. She will wonder where her brother is, what mission has pulled him away for so many weeks this time, and I will tell her to think about happier things and not to strain her precious new heart, and we will visit the belvedere temple on the island on the far side of the bridge that spans the chasm, and there I will leave a coin for the sibyl, and a little blue flower too, in honor of being older, and to tell you that I forgive you. For I know why we must try so hard to live. And why we must not live too long, for we mustn't tire love. For love will outlast us, however long it takes, Daniel.

Daniel, however long it takes.

 

R
USS
R
YMER
is the author of
Genie: A Scientific Tragedy
and
American Beach: A Saga of Race, Wealth, and Memory.
He has received a Guggenheim fellowship, a Radcliffe Institute fellowship, and the Whiting Writers' Award, and he was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award. Rymer has contributed articles to
The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine
, the
New York Times
, and
National Geographic. Paris Twilight
is his first novel.