The Conversion (21 page)

After all, if I was still in love with Michel, then wouldn’t I perhaps be scheming to stay longer? “Let me put it this way. This job in America, this job in New York, if I get it, nothing will stop me from going back. This, I think, is really the best way to answer your question.”

The offer didn’t come until early January. Ironically, I was out on Michel’s BMW, completing a revolution of the stately place Vendôme, when a programmed wailing of bagpipes burst from the pocket of my leather jacket. I pulled over to the side of the road and answered the call of the man who had interviewed me in Paris and who now offered me the job with the proviso that I come back to America and begin work in a month’s time. Peering up at the grand, spiraling obelisk that was once famously knocked down by the Paris Communards, I accepted the position and headed over to Michel’s apartment to break the news.

He greeted me at the door with a suggestive kiss, smelling faintly of vetiver. He wore a tailored flannel shirt and a pair of crisply pressed chinos and had a tan left over from the family trip to Martinique. We sat adjacent to each other in his living room, which was furnished with simple lacquered furniture, buttery distressed leather armchairs, and tall, willowy halogen lamps that stood sentinel in various corners and whose light lent the room a dreamy, watery splendor. Despite his efforts to make the place seem like a home, to me it felt cramped and temporary in comparison to his fusty, ramshackle apartment on the avenue Foch.

“I’ve been looking into the Yucatán,”Michel announced to me, grinning sexily and pressing his leg against mine when I sat down next to him.

“How so?” I asked, trying to fight my feelings of immediate arousal.

“In March I think you and I should take a trip there together.”

“Alone?”

Michel frowned. “Of course alone.”

The sort of thing I’d dreamed about ever since I met him more than a year and a half before, the sort of idyll that even now still enticed me.

“Have you discussed it with Laurence?”

“I’ve mentioned it. She does not object. As long as I am going with you.”

“Very understanding of her,” I say, knowing that Laurence is probably assuming that I won’t be able to go.

“She is a good wife.”

Hesitating a moment, I told him, “Like I said before, you don’t deserve her. And now that I’ve gotten to know her, I can say it with even more assurance.”

Michel looked crestfallen; after all, it was not the first time that I’d told him this. “Well, you make it easy for me not to deserve her,” he parried.

Of course he was right; for I, too, was a hypocrite. Before I’d arrived back in Paris I’d told Michel, knowing what the situation was with Laurence, knowing her feelings about it, that I’d feel like a heel if I slept with him again. But of course in the end I couldn’t keep myself away from him, need and loneliness being far stronger passions than the prick of moral conscience.

“Anyway, March … I won’t be here any longer,” I said at last.

“Oh?”

Agitated, I got up and, with a clomp of motorcycle boots, walked over to a floor-to-ceiling window that opened out onto a side view of the Beaubourg. Looking through an angle of streets paved in winter pallor, I could spy the cement fields of Forum des Halles and a woman, dressed impeccably in a tailored suit, riding a Vespa into the maze. Finally I turned around to face him. “I was offered a job in New York,” I said, watching his face drain of color.

“From whom?”

“The Italian Cultural Institute.”

“I see. And have you accepted it?”

“Today, as a matter of fact. Just before I came here.”

Michel groaned and looked down at his feet. “Maybe you’ll change your mind and come anyway.”

“I won’t change my mind,” I said gently.

He shook his head. “Well, I suppose I know this is happening sooner or later. I hardly expect you to keep living in Paris. You have to go back to America at some point. I don’t think it will be so soon.” There was a pause, and then he inquired, “But how soon, Russell?”

“They want me to start in a month.”

He leaned forward in his armchair, the leather creaking, and rubbed his face, his curls, bleached lighter by the Martinique sun, spilling over his hands. I didn’t go to him. I was afraid. When he looked up at me there were tears in his eyes.

I told him to come and stay with me as much as he wanted. “Now that you’ve sold the business, you’ll certainly have the time.”

“It won’t be the same. You know that.”

“Look, Michel, I love being in Paris. But I’m nearly out of money.”

“What about the insurance money?”

“No word. I think it’s being contested, quite frankly. And I told you I don’t want it anyway.”

“Yes, you did tell me.”

“Therefore all the more reason for me to find a steady, paying income.”

“Well, you know you can teach English here. I can help you find more work. And of course continue with your translating. So you can write.”

But Michel knew I wasn’t writing. “I’ve been thinking that instead of doing all this freelance translation that I should pursue something a bit more challenging and with some real responsibility.”

He glowered at me. “You’re being so American about this.”

“Wait a minute. I
am
American.”

“Yes, you are. I guess I like to forget that.”

“Just as you like to forget your wife is American. Take her American name away and give her a French one, instead. But she’s still American in the end, isn’t she?”

Michel winced. “Okay, enough!”

Beyond all this, the fact remained that I am someone who could probably never live full-time in Europe, much as I relished being there, much as I longed for it when I am back home. One disturbing thing I’ve noticed: The majority of Americans I’ve met who are living permanently in Paris for non-work-related reasons are Americans who on some level really hate their native country, embittered expats who have resolved never to cross the Atlantic again. I cannot relate to this mind-set.

At last I sat down next to him and rested my head against his shoulder. Michel resumed, “First I leave you. And now you leave me. Remember that day I broke it off? On your street in the Eighteenth?”

“You seemed so cool, so sure of yourself. That made it really hard.”

“And you seemed so hurt by it.”

“Well, I was.”

“Now the roles are reversed,” he said wistfully, managing somehow to smile.

“I guess they are.”

Farther out in Brooklyn, the F train elevates to a very high vantage point, and I can see far and wide, the winking lights of the snowbound city, the white feathering of the railings and finials of the brownstones, the
sugar-coating
of the lamps and the streetlights. At Avenue U, I step out into the gelid air that smells as fresh as a country hamlet, and there is even a salty hint of the not-too-distant Great South Bay. I am the only person walking down the metal steps toward the street, and once I start heading toward my destination, I find that in certain places the drifts come up past my knees. My boots aren’t waterproof, I can feel snow melting inside them, and soon I begin shivering. When I reach my apartment building, I can see the entrance has been neither shoveled nor swept. Trudging up the limestone steps, heading into the warm vestibule, I am assailed by the familiar smell of garlic and slow-cooking meat sauce. The building is owned by a first-generation American family with Calabrese roots; I am the only tenant who is not a relative. Despite the fact that other blood relations would love to take over my apartment, the landlords allow me to stay. They like the fact that I speak Italian and, when I was living there, had taken the liberty of knocking on my door with letters that arrived from Naples and Lecce and Palermo, asking me for an on-the-spot translation.

I walk up the rickety vinyl stairs to the second floor, where I can see several bundles of mail have been tied up by my subtenants and left outside my door. Loading everything into plastic carry bags, I notice a package wrapped in the lined brown paper used by European stationers and covered with foreign-looking decals:
PAR AVION, VIA AEREA
; blue stickers: 1
ME CLASSE, PRIMA CLASSE
. Someone has spent quite a bit of money to send me something, and at first I think Marina is forwarding me Stefano’s books with yet another entreaty to have a go at translating them. But then I see the return address is the Hotel Birague, Paris. Could Ed and I have left something there?

I throw off my gloves and begin to rip into the package, which has been powerfully wrapped and gives a great deal of resistance. Finally I am able to tear a face of the outer layer away and see what is underneath.

The title page jumps out at me:
A POET’S LIFE,
in the all-too-familiar courier typewriter font. The combination of handwritten and printed pages has been carefully copied. There is a note.

One year later.

I’m browsing through the shelves of my local bookseller and notice the stack of
A Poet’s Life
set out on a card table. I approach it slowly, pick up a single copy, and hold it for a few moments in cupped hands. Staring back at me from the book jacket is a thirty-year-old picture of Ed posing on the Accademia Bridge; the Grand Canal is behind him, a blur of gondolas and barges. He looks youthful and even a bit surly, the way I might look had I been blessed with such gratification so early in my career.

The moment I found Ed’s memoir, the urge to delve into it once again was dead; burning the manuscript had destroyed the desire to read and reread the hurtful things that he had written about me. Unfortunately, I’d also incinerated a ten-year work-in-progress that an important writer had spent years layering with elegant language, adding and peeling away sentences and paragraphs that he deemed worthy or unworthy of a finished work of art. So much energy and worry and self-flagellation could not all be transformed to flames and smoke. Something had to remain, images of an unfinished life in words, the wisdom of the
unfinished
life of the author who made them. Because I was haunted by what I’d done, because I finally realized that I should never have tried to control how Ed saw me or how he wrote about me, I kept finding it impossible to write anything true of my own—until I rediscovered his manuscript.

Standing in the vestibule of my old apartment, I divined that Ed
probably
had some sort of premonition that he’d not live to see America again—why else would he have sent his only copy to me rather than to himself? Was he was just too egotistical to let three hundred pages lapse into obscurity? With this in mind I packed his book in the plastic bags along with the rest of my mail, trudged back out into the snowy night, and went home to my sublet. The following morning I hopped the subway into Manhattan, rang the buzzer at Annie Calhoun’s apartment, and made an unannounced delivery.

Once I turned over the manuscript, I felt a sense of relief far greater than the counterfeit relief that came only fleetingly when I was burning Ed’s pages. I felt fortunate to have had a chance to correct an
unpardonable
mistake. Somehow I knew that if I caught the subway home to Brooklyn, made my way back through the as-yet-unplowed streets of my new neighborhood, that I’d begin a long uninterrupted day of writing, the very first day I began writing a new book.

I’ve long since imagined the feeling of finally seeing Ed’s hybrid mass of manually typed and scribbled yellow sheets translated into bold,
indelible
print. Although he’d had me read a substantial portion of the manuscript, I’ve seen only a fraction of what he’s written about me. I have no idea to what extent he went in order to justify his feelings of rejection.

Frankly, I’ve been expecting the prose itself to have been tampered with, for many of Ed’s short phrases to have been strung together, possibly linked with conjunctions in an attempt to make them fall more smoothly. However, the first thing I discover is that the sentences are published pretty much as they were composed. I feel foolish for not factoring in this distinct possibility. After all, he was a great artist whose brushstrokes should be respected and honored.

One of my early footnotes to Ed had been that he needed to fold more insight into his descriptions. Often he’d recount an anecdote but seemed neither to ponder its psychological implications nor give much attention to the reactions of the people involved in the story. And yet when I now read some of these passages, unchanged in the final version, they appear to contain just the proper amount of analysis. So what had I been thinking? Why had they bothered me before?

I’d told Ed to cut many passages in which he gave what I felt was unremarkable information about where he was when he wrote a poem as well as the circumstances surrounding the genesis of that poem. But now, as I read these depictions, they strike me to be actually vital to
understanding
not only how the man worked, and the emotions that drove him, but probably will help scholars fathom his state of mind: his bouts with depression, his insomnia, his ongoing struggle with his creative genius, his string of failures in love. And then, of course, there is the description of his sero-conversion, which is handled magnificently. The portrayal of that highly erotic encounter is lyrical and pitiless and may even be among the most forceful passages ever written about a disease gaining its first foothold in a human body.

I’m ashamed to realize what is actually much less compelling about the book: the story of Ed’s affair with the college student that I had urged him to
beef up and publish separately. Once again, outside of shifting some sentences around, he ignored my advice—luckily for him. Now the section affects me totally differently than when I first read it in Paris. It actually seems overly long and drawn out and even in some places superfluous. However, as I read further and further into the book, I keep uncovering lovely passages, filigrees of powerful insight that I seemed to have missed previously. All in all, by suggesting that he remove much of what has turned out to be important, I’ve proven myself to be a terrible editor. What was I thinking? Why was my judgment so off base? Were my instincts substantially different now because I was taking my own stab at some of the same material?

Finally I locate the place where the passages about mine and Ed’s relationship should begin. In a matter of moments I realize that they are missing. Then I check the index, scan the alphabetized list of names, and find that mine is not among them. It’s like a landscape that you have viewed so many times suddenly disappearing to become an unbending, empty horizon. How can this be? I wonder with disbelief. How did they manage to cut me out? And then I remind myself: Of course Annie Calhoun and Ed’s publishers would rid the book of any allusion to me, in case I, as a defamed living person, decided to bring a lawsuit against the estate.

Trying to remain calm, I manage to digest the last fifty pages that cover the period of his life that saw the advent of me up until a few days before he died. Someone has figured out a way to present the material while whiting out any reference to a romantic interest, much less Ed’s romantic obsession. I’d once deplored the idea of our relationship and Ed’s
dissatisfaction
with it being brought before the public. Now having resigned myself to it, expecting to see it, I actually feel deflated. For I know that the reader will come away from
A Poet’s Life
with the portrait of a man who was terribly lonely, who died struggling with his writing, and not of somebody tormented by his love for a younger man.

I have taken a week’s vacation in Tuscany, and Marina and I are on our usual morning stroll around the grounds; the summer air is so saturated with pollen that I keep sneezing. “
Salute
,” she says as the dogs race by us on their way to the lily pond.

I look beyond Marina toward the villa and see Carla coming out onto the loggia. Sweeping the marble tiles, she catches sight of us and salutes us with her broom. “Carla seems awfully cheerful,” I remark.

“That’s because the farmer, the man who makes our wine, is courting her very seriously. Although she says she’s too old to get married again, I do believe she enjoys his attention.”

Marina picks up a soggy stick and tosses it to her pack of dogs, who chase it, gleefully yipping.

“Speaking of courtship, what about
you?
” I query. Marina blushes noticeably. “Anybody on the horizon?”

She admits to having a correspondence with a Milanese man whom she’d met years ago and who will soon come to pay her a visit. “But I am not too worried or invested in what will happen. I am like my dogs in this way,” she comments. “Fine on my own, riveted to the possibilities of the present. I also have learned that the times when you are most content with your own solitude is when lovers suddenly pitch up into your path.”

“I’ll look forward to the day when that happens to me.”

She chuckles but decides to keep her opinion about this to herself. Opting—wisely, perhaps—not to press her for it, I continue walking a few paces without further commentary.

“So what are you telling me, Russell?” She turns to me at last. “There is nobody new in your life?”

“For once I can honestly say no.”

Marina grins. “I’m actually glad to hear this. And I have no doubt that it is because of this book that you are now writing.”

She knows I’ve been working steadily for months, that the desire to set things down is stronger than it has been in years. I remember the day I went to visit Victor Hugo’s house in the place des Vosges, how I grabbed the leg of his desk in desperation and prayed to be released from my obsession with Michel Soyer. Now there is no one occupying my thoughts. I am free to write my own version of my escape to
Europe
, my relationship with him and with Ed, and how I first came to the Villa Guidi.

“You know, Russell,” Marina continues, “there is one thing about writing a book that you can be sure of.”

“What’s that?”

“Unlike lovers, my friend, the book will never desert you.”

I, however, can desert the book, I think but do not say.

Marina has paused for a moment, leaning on her walking stick, fixing me with her pale, unnerving gaze. Her knee-high rubber boots are
splattered
with mud and, despite the heat, she is wearing her favorite tweed jacket. “By not being honest with you, I suppose that I am no better than some of these lovers of yours.”

“But a friend—”

“A friend should be held to an even higher standard. If we put up with a lot when we’re in love, accept lies when we know they’re lies, then our friends should always be our allies, they should always give us the truth.”

“I agree.”

“You see, I tried to protect Stefano from the truth: that nobody but I considered his work very important. Meanwhile I was the one everybody thought was accomplished. Knowing how difficult this would be for him to live with, the only thing I could do was to make him greater than myself in order to make him feel like a true husband. I tried desperately hard to do this …” Her voice breaks. “I failed miserably!” Pausing for a moment to collect herself, she touches me on the shoulder. “And then … I guess I believed you were our last hope. I thought you really
could
help us.” She grabs my arm for emphasis. “But, Russell, I only came to that
after
I invited you to stay here. And in the end I was too embarrassed and felt I couldn’t let you know
everything
.”

I decide to be gracious and refrain from telling her that I’d figured much of this out quite some time ago. “Thank you, Marina,” I say. “And now that we’re on apologies, I have one to make to you.”

Marina begins frowning.

“For not listening.”

She laughs. “How could you listen to me after all? I was so insistent about everything.”

“Well, for one thing, I should not have gone back to Paris.”

“Ah, yes, but you didn’t
stay
in Paris. You realized what it was all about and then you went to New York.”

“Luckily, the job—”

“I was afraid you wouldn’t take that job, that the Frenchman would dissuade you from taking it. But when you did, I knew that you were going to be fine.”

“And then, of course, Ed’s manuscript. I should have sent that back just as you instructed me to. It was wrong for me to hold on to it.”

Marina hesitates and then says, “Well, I’ve thought about this a lot myself. And I finally decided that you needed to hold on to it.”

We enter a row of plane trees and she looks up into the tall matrix of branches, eyes blinking with rapid thoughts going on behind them. “I’ve been meaning to say I think
A Poet’s Life
is a horrible title. What is your opinion of it?”

“It’s not so bad. What would be better?”

Marina smiles. “How does the title
Unrequited Love
sound in English?”

I consider for a moment. “I think it’s a bad title in English. In Italian it probably sounds better because of the word order:
Amore Non Richiesto
.”

Marina shakes her head. “It doesn’t, actually. It’s wrong for the Italian, too. In fact, it sounds really ugly. Doesn’t it sound ugly to you?”

“Honestly? No.”

“Then again, I suppose the title is a good reflection of what the book is about.”

I stop walking and look at her. “Hardly! Everything about me was taken out.”

She laughs. “Russell, please, you’re not the only person this man lost his head over. If you read this book it shows the unfortunate pattern of his romantic life.”

“But, wait, so then you’ve read it, too?” Marina nods her head slowly. “You told me you’d never read it.”

“Sometimes, Russell, I can be a hypocrite. But I have read this book. Rizzoli sent me an early copy in the mail. The translation will soon be
available
here with this horrible
Amore Non Richiesto
title that you seem to like.”

“What do I know?”

Soon the pack of dogs rush by us. Marina turns to pat Primo, the black-and-white one she calls “the beneficent father,” as we make the final turn back toward the villa.

The Italian version of Ed’s book is lying on the dining table. The same picture of him on the Accademia Bridge glares back at me, but the photo has a sepia tint; it’s more tasteful than the American edition.
Amore Non Richiesto
.

I pick it up and flip through the pages. “I guess you’re right,” I say. “The title’s not so great.”

“Of course I’m right. I’m Italian!”

“I forgot to mention to you that I got a letter from the Italians, from Rizzoli asking me to sign a form to indemnify them.”

“Oh, really?”

“They must’ve heard that I ended up with the manuscript and were just covering themselves.”

“May I have the book now, please?” Marina says. I hand it to her. Holding it against her chest, she asks with her old imperious tone, “This waiver you signed, Russell. How carefully did you read it?”