“Are you sure?”
“Yes, quite sure.”
But why would she have left without saying good-bye? Without praising my butterfly one last time?
I carried my bags out to the parking lot before going to have a final look at the pool. It was as crowded as ever, umbrellas jostling one another, waiters hurrying about with trays of drinks.
But the chair where she had sat that morning was empty, and on it was her bundle, looking forlorn and almost frightened. I picked it up and untied the knot. Inside was a ream of blank paper.
POISON PLANTS
The first time I met the young man was at a charity concert, just as a children’s choir was beginning an encore of Brahms’s “Little Dustman.”
“Would you like another?” he asked, taking an empty champagne glass from my hand. His white suit—obviously rented—was too large for his slender frame.
“You have a lovely voice,” I said, ignoring his question. “You should be in a choir yourself.”
“Thank you,” he said, smiling politely. “But I’m afraid my voice is not what it used to be.” One rarely meets a young man at once so deferential and, at the same time, self-assured.
“A shame,” I said. “Those little berets that they’re wearing would suit you. Are you interested in music?”
“Yes, indeed. In fact, I’m hoping to go to the conservatory.”
“If not to sing, then what for?”
“I’d like to be a composer.”
“But why? When you have such a beautiful voice?”
The children had finished their performance and were filing off the stage. They were very well behaved—except for one little boy who couldn’t stop fidgeting with his beret.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like another?” he said, holding up my empty glass. His hand was large and strong.
“Why not?” I said. I didn’t really want more champagne, but I wanted him to come back to me.
The concert was organized by a local banker, a man who had bought a number of my paintings in the past. In the days that followed, I had him arrange a “scholarship” to help this boy with his studies. He had been wasting his time with odd jobs to make ends meet, so we came to an agreement. I would pay for the lessons he needed to prepare for the entrance exam to the conservatory, and he would come every other week on Saturday night to eat dinner with me and to report on his progress. I’m not sure he fully realized what this meant. Still, he did what I asked of him without complaint, and he even thanked me in that polite way of his.
I knew there was something arrogant about my little arrangement, but I also knew it wouldn’t last for long. All too soon, the rest of his body would catch up with his hands—and just as soon I would be too old to lift a glass of champagne.
* * *
I remember the first visit well. It was a cold, windy night.
“What a wonderful house you have,” he said, looking all around. He was dressed in corduroy pants and a heavy duffle coat.
“Sit down,” I said. It was somehow unsettling to hear his pure voice—which I had heard only over the din of a party—here in the quiet of my home.
He sat at one end of the sofa and folded his hands in his lap. The little smile on his face seemed to ask what he should do next.
We moved to the dining room and ate shrimp cocktail and meat loaf. I had asked the maid to stay late to serve. He would eat a shrimp, take a bite of meat loaf, then take a sip of water, and in between he gave me a detailed account of his studies. The banker’s instructions must have been very specific.
Thanks to my “scholarship,” he had been able to add voice lessons and had found a new piano teacher who had connections at the conservatory. You might imagine that such things don’t matter in the world of music, but in reality they make all the difference. He was also able to hire a tutor for music theory, and he described the man’s peculiar insistence on sterilizing the desk and chair before the lesson could begin. He had started to attend concerts at least once a week, and had bought some reference works that had been too expensive before. Fascinating books, he said, terribly useful. He had brought receipts, he told me.
“I don’t need receipts,” I said.
“No?” He was out of breath from his long speech. He pressed his napkin to his mouth and then took the last bite of meat loaf.
I had no particular interest in his lessons or anything else he told me; I simply wanted to hear his voice, speaking now for me alone.
* * *
After dinner, we had tea in the living room. His report complete, he had little more to say. He stirred his tea cautiously and took a single cookie from the plate on the table. When our eyes met, he smiled faintly. I suspect he may have been worried about boring me—but bored as I have been by the silence in this big house for so many years, I found myself absorbed by the stillness, now that he was near me. I listened to the winter wind blowing outside.
“You have a piano,” he said at last, gesturing to where it stood in the corner of the room. I almost thought I heard the piano let out a little cry, as though its strings had been plucked simply by his regard.
“My daughter used to play,” I said. “I had it tuned for the first time in thirty years in honor of your visit.”
“You have a daughter?”
“I did; she died when she was nineteen.”
“I’m sorry…” he said, returning his cup to the saucer.
“You needn’t be. Everyone I know has died. My past is full of ghosts.”
The locks of hair at his temples threw shadows on his face. His nose was straight and finely shaped; his intelligent eyes seemed to drink in everything around him. And his lips looked so soft you wanted instinctively to touch them.
“Do you still paint?” he asked.
“No, I can’t,” I said, staring at his profile. “My hands don’t work properly anymore.” Despite the careful manicure and a ring—a present from an old lover—there was no denying that my hands were wrinkled and ugly. If I reached out for him, these hands would tremble with fear. And yet he took them in his and gently rubbed them, as though he believed his touch could restore their youth.
“Could you play something for me?” I asked. Releasing my hands, he went to the piano. The lid moaned as he opened it. “Something by Liszt,” I said. “The ‘Liebestraum,’ if you don’t mind.” His fingers settled on the keyboard.
* * *
My young prince came without fail every other Saturday evening, precisely at five. As the weeks passed, we grew less formal with each other. He told me about his studies or not as the mood dictated. We talked about whatever captured our fancy. Often we would take a walk until it was time for dinner. We wandered through the park, or, when my strength allowed, we climbed the hill beyond to admire the sunset.
At such moments, he would seem quite grown up. He would take my hand—the one not holding the cane—and wrap his arm solicitously around my shoulder. “Lean on me,” he would whisper in my ear, and those few words had the power to make me utterly content.
When it rained, we leafed through books of paintings, or I would show him albums of photographs and tell him about my past. Sometimes I told his fortune from the cards, and at those times he was once again the innocent little boy. He would hold his breath, hardly able to contain his excitement, as I revealed for him the significance of the numbers and pictures.
“Can you see what will happen in my love life?” he asked.
“Of course,” I told him.
He wrote down his girlfriend’s birthday on a piece of paper—just a few numbers, but they told everything about the girl’s youth, and made me terribly sad.
After dinner we would sit quietly. Sometimes he would play records while I wrote letters, or perhaps we would watch a movie on the television.
But I was happiest when my prince read aloud to me.
“My eyes tire easily…” I would murmur, and I knew he would never refuse. He would sit to my left on the couch, since my right ear is a bit deaf, and begin from the spot where we had left off the last time. Almost any book would do. Historical fiction, science fiction … I would have been happy to hear him read the telephone book. I simply wanted to hear his voice, to savor its warmth, the feel of its vibration in my ears.
He read quietly, his tone almost flat, and sometimes he even stumbled over the words. But it made no difference. His breath, as he hesitated over a character, seemed to caress my face.
The hill was planted with fruit: a few grapevines and some peach and loquat trees. The rest was all kiwis.… The kiwis in particular grew so thick that on moonlit nights when the wind was blowing, the whole hillside would tremble as though covered with a swarm of dark-green bats …
He was reading a book from my husband’s library. I’ve forgotten the title now. His lips pursed sweetly around the word “kiwi,” as though they ached to meet mine.
I sensed the lingering warmth of the sun as I washed the flesh of the carrot. Scrubbing turned it bright red. I had no idea where to insert the knife, but I decided it would be best to begin by cutting off the five fingers. One by one, they rolled across the cutting board. That evening, my potato salad had bits of the pinkie and the index finger.
My prince never hurried, pronouncing each word with great care. His voice came from deep in his chest, yet it was soft and almost meek, and trembled ever so slightly at the end of a phrase. It filled the room like music, like liquid, and I felt as though I could reach out and scoop it up in my hands.
The post office was searched and found to contain a mountain of kiwis. But when the fruit was cleared out, it revealed only the mangy body of a cat.… As the sun fell behind the trees in the orchard, the shovel uncovered a decomposing body in the vegetable patch.…
His eyes never left the book, and he would continue to read until I stopped him. The slight rustling sound as he turned a page added to the charm of his performance. The downy hairs on his neck glowed gold under the light of the chandelier. His curls had grown out since we’d first met, half hiding his ears. The contour of his chest was visible under his sweater—a boy’s chest that would soon be a man’s.
I closed my eyes and let his voice wash over me, tracing his form in my mind in painstaking detail: his toes and calves, his hips, his arms, chin, lips, eyelids … And I felt his smooth tongue and long fingers run delicately over my body. The curls tickled my cheeks and I stifled a cry as his breath moved down along my side.
My hands were young again—no wrinkles, no trembling—and as he touched me I could feel the rest of me hurrying back to the past as well. I would be able to grip a brush again, to paint the picture I wanted. I would be able to wrap my fingers around his penis …
* * *
“What sort of man was your husband?” he asked, taking a photograph down from the mantel.
“I’ve forgotten,” I said.
“You can’t mean that.”
“It’s true. He’s been dead more than forty years now and I’ve forgotten. I’m afraid it can’t be helped. Forty years is a long time—you can’t possibly imagine.”
“He was handsome,” he said.
“Don’t be silly. You can’t tell anything from an old picture.”
“And you were very beautiful,” he said—to me, forty years ago.
“He was wealthy. He hired me to do paintings of some of the plants in his garden. There was a great difference in our ages. I was a poor art student, barely nineteen, a waif with paint on her fingers.” He had slipped the bookmark between the pages and handed the book to me. I held it to my chest. “The plants I painted were all quite poisonous: wild sweet peas, locoweed, monkshood. When I finished the paintings, we got married.”
He put on his duffle coat, tied his shoes, and bowed. “I’ve had a wonderful time.” He said the same words each time he left me, and I believe he meant them. He turned again at the gate to wave. I kept my hands on my cane, but I nodded to signal he should go, and he would hurry off into the darkness to catch the last train.
* * *
Just once he tried to break his promise. He telephoned to ask if it would be all right if he didn’t come on Saturday. I knew every nuance of his voice, and I could tell how nervous he was.
“Are you ill?” I asked.
“No, but I was wondering whether I could come Sunday instead.”
“Is something wrong? Did something happen?”
“No,” he said again.
“But tell me why you can’t come. I’ll worry if you don’t.”
“I’m sorry to ask, after all you’ve done for me.”
“That’s not the point,” I told him. “I want to know why you can’t come.”
He was silent for a moment. “It’s my girlfriend’s birthday,” he said at last. I remembered the date he had written down when I was telling his fortune, and the numbers and symbols on the cards.
“No,” I said. I hadn’t intended to say it, but the word slipped out.
“But her birthday is on Saturday.”
“So is mine,” I said. This was a lie, of course, and he knew it. “And who knows, I may not be alive to celebrate next year. I’ll expect you as usual.” Then I hung up.
My prince came on Saturday evening. “Happy birthday,” he said. He had brought a small bouquet of flowers, the same ones, I supposed, he would have given to his girlfriend—yellow, fragile, they seemed to shudder as I put them in the vase and set them on the mantel. I had no idea what they were called, but they reminded me of one of the flowers I had painted for my husband long ago.
“Shall I continue reading?” He opened the book without being asked.
* * *
My cane struck a small stone and I fell, skinning both my hands. Blood oozed from the wounds, and the pain was terrible. One of my sandals came off and rolled into the grass. A spotted dog appeared from somewhere and began sniffing at it.
“Scat!” I called, brandishing my cane, and it backed away with a snarl. I managed to pull myself up on a tree, but the bark was rough against my skin.
I had been climbing the hill behind the park as we often had but decided to turn back before I reached the top. Then I had lost my way and found myself in a part of the wood I did not know. One side of the path was a stand of fern in a bog; the other, dense undergrowth. The sun suddenly seemed low in the sky.