Tolstoy Lied : A Love Story (9780547527307) Page 2

  Long ago I came to the conclusion that all married people are with the CIA. Once they were truthful women and men; friends I understood and knew intimately; people like me, whose every up and down was acknowledged and evaluated in the company of confidants. Then came the wedding. That old saying is nonsense: a wedding never made an honest woman or made an honest man out of anyone. During the ceremony brides and grooms take a vow of secrecy. Afterward, they could tell you what makes their marriage tick; they could explain how they manage day to day without throttling one another; whether they have regrets; and why, in fact, the institution of marriage is desirable in the first place. But then they’d have to kill you.

  I’m retired now. My role in life: to supply patience and reason to all comers. Long after Yolanda’s other friends refuse to come to the phone, I listen to her jeremiad of flopped romance. Knowing my own pessimism wouldn’t be livable for her, I urge her to persevere toward her ideal of happiness—which is, after all, the purpose of friendship. And when my cousin Gabby phones from California to complain about her mother, who recently presented Gabby with four enormous boxes of dishes (Aunt Rona bought the set on sale years ago, planning to give them to Gabby for a wedding gift, “But,” she told Gabby with stoic sadness, “it looks like maybe that’s not going to be. So take. Use them in good health.” Gabby took. She has been driving around with a trunk full of dishes for weeks, unable to bring the boxes into her apartment because of the unshakable sense that the act will curse her to eternal single-hood), I tell my cousin to put the dishes in basement storage and use the story as a joke—and if that doesn’t help, she might casually inform Rona she’s considering buying her a walker; of course it’s premature but they’re on sale.

  When I can’t sleep I take a book to the all-night café on Sixth Avenue. I sip seltzer alongside the giddy and the drowsy-eyed and those quarreling in foreign languages. In the tight quarters of Manhattan cafés, it’s polite to feign deafness, but of course everyone listens. This is the intimacy of New Yorkers, unmatched anywhere in the world. Night after night, I listen to people talk about love. Midnight, two A.M., three: New Yorkers cluster in cafés, the daytime’s distractions at last shed.

  Where love is concerned, there are two kinds of people: those who think a relationship with a decent, devoted person is a keeper unless there’s a resounding minus; and those who think a relationship with a decent, devoted person is a starting point. New York City, being populated by eight million opportunities for trading up, is peopled primarily by the more exacting variety of romantics. They settle on hard plastic chairs, order coffee or herbal tea, and speculate about the one they’d like to know, used to know, hope to meet: his moods, her intelligence, her breasts. The person like no other. Sometimes my students come in, and after a cautious wave pick a table far from their professor. I do them the courtesy of burying my nose deeper in my book, and send them a silent wish for luck. College students are specialists in love and its many homonyms, and can’t fathom a life without them. Male and female, they spend hours in fierce debate: Would you give up a job, a friendship, a religion, for someone you loved? Would you rather a spouse with whom you could have great sex, or one who gives great back rubs? The café on my block harbors abiding concern over Deepsters—white guys who take a woman to a drum circle for a first date, throwing themselves into the fray of African dancing, and they’re good at it, flapping their arms as convincingly as any eagle in midtown Manhattan. Men with wingspan. Men pious about their politics. Then there are the whisper-voiced women who insist you remove your shoes in their apartments. A man can never be vegetarian enough for such a woman. There are the men who fall in love instantly and woo hard, poeticizing their own abasement, proud of the psychic bruises they incur in their desperate pursuit . . . then when the woman agrees to start a relationship, they run away so fast you hear the thunderclap: sonic boomers. There are the women who worry aloud about hurting their dates, women so unsure of what they want in a relationship that they’re torn in half; they really care for you, they’ve never met anyone quite like you, but they’re so busy with their own struggle to find themselves they can’t be with you right now, though perhaps in the future, it’s nothing personal, we are sorry, your call is important to us please hold.

  People look alike when they cry. Faces naked, thrust forward, each ragged breath a question. The younger women give in most easily to the messiness of the production, honking their noses and letting out peals of anguish. When the worst is past they blink at the bright café with puffy eyes. To watch them come back to themselves—to hear that first muffled giggle—is to witness the return of expectation. Sometimes the men cry too, their heads absolutely still—a discipline requiring untold effort. They don’t use tissues, only the backs of their hands, and they never look in the café’s many mirrors when they’re done: if you don’t acknowledge tears, they aren’t real.

  Night after night, book and tea mug in hand, I hear men groaning under the weight of their girlfriends’ ticking clocks. I hear women sighing to one another over the stupidities of their boyfriends, cementing late-night womanly bonds of exquisite martyrdom. Well, they pronounce with heavy shrugs, we’ve got to live with it.

  And I want to say: No one’s forcing you.

  One night I will do it. I will stand up on my table, clink spoon against glass, and give my blessing to the crowd. Don’t settle, I will say. And don’t pursue love against the interest of your own health, like an addict in need of a fix. And don’t give up hope, if you think there’s something out there worth waiting for. When you meet that person, you don’t just want to be kind of happy. You want to be preposterous-happy.

  I miss sex. That’s a vertiginous, aching fact. But my fascination with love goes deeper than sex. Love is the channel of mysteries. The unlocker of secrets, decoder ring of souls. People are ciphers until you love them. The prosecutor whose underlings tremble at his command? Love this man and he will show you his Giant Killer Gecko imitation. His hidden fear of drowning. His single childhood memory of his grandfather. Love is a window, and in this city of façades we lone pedestrians can’t help trying to warm ourselves by its light.

  At home I watch figure skating on television with the sound off: couples slipping across the ice with exuberant ease. I’m not sure whether to believe their high-wattage smiles. Most of the time, I think of love the way I think of literature. It moves me; I study it; my study helps me understand the world around me. But although I believe in the epic power of Hamlet’s struggles, I don’t expect to run into him walking down the street. Some days my life feels muffled, not fully lived, because it’s conducted alone. I think: if a concrete block fell through my ceiling tonight and I choked on a muffin and drowned in the sink, just how long would it take until someone realized I was missing? Other days singleness is euphoria. I am a meteor passing through this city, showering sparks.

  I’m happy in my own way. Maybe scorning happy people—making them sound uninventive and stupid—comforted Tolstoy during his own unhappy life. But deep contentment is as individual as a footprint. For example:

  Sitting at my desk the morning of February 15, watching the florist’s truck pull up across the street and a delivery boy emerge with a bouquet of red roses. Those heavy crimson heads whip in the wind as he searches for the right buzzer. I imagine the argument that must have ensued the previous night when someone’s valentine fell asleep on the job. And I lean back and munch carrot sticks and consider the satisfying hours I spent reading Welty on the evening of February 14, arguing and agreeing in blue ink in the margins; prodding the limits of my understanding; reveling in the intimate, exacting company of my own mind. Then calling a friend and, later, watching a favorite L.A. Law rerun. And how I probably had a better time than the woman across the street whose boyfriend has dispatched this delivery boy. One hurt and shaken woman, and two men desperate: the boyfriend for forgiveness, the delivery boy for the right doorbell as the wind nearly spins the roses out of their vase. You tell me who had a b
etter Valentine’s Day.

  Like that. That’s how I, Tracy Farber, am happy.

  There’s a knock on my office door. Four o’clock on the dot. Entering, Elizabeth practically genuflects. “Is this a good time?”

  “Of course.” I wave her to a chair. “I was expecting you.”

  Seated, Elizabeth rummages in her backpack for a notebook, which she opens primly on her lap. “Here’s what I’m thinking of saying,” she begins in a wobbly voice.

  I settle back in my seat. Elizabeth is in her mid-twenties, petite, Midwestern, with straight, dark hair pulled back in a loose knot and pale skin that only amplifies the darkness of her eyes—a doll’s large black-button eyes. If this were the 1600s, someone would write a sonnet to her ebony gaze and high, flawless brow. Listening to her outline an analysis of Dickinson’s romance motifs, I have little to say but terrific observation and nice framing. After a few minutes I interject: “Elizabeth, I just want to make certain that you’re comfortable with December.”

  Reluctantly she raises her eyes from her notes.

  “We can always schedule a later date for your defense. There’s no need for you to overextend yourself.”

  “No, no, I’ll be fine.”

  She looks baffled by my smile—reminding me that graduate students never understand how invested their advisers are in their progress.

  We in the English Department are odd birds. My colleagues stride the corridors chasing the flapping tail of the next thought, getting exercised about the misinterpretation of a chiasmus, pausing to scan conference flyers that woo participants by describing the host city’s sky as “pellucid.” But Elizabeth’s oddness is more apparent than most. She treads the corridors like a prairie dog just popped up from a tunnel, blinking at the light. Unlike the average jaded graduate student, Elizabeth still treats faculty like demigods. Without my repeated invitation she wouldn’t have presumed to schedule this meeting to discuss her introductory remarks for her dissertation committee. Though technically she ought to be dissatisfied—the unexpected retirement of our Dickinson specialist two years ago denied her the chance for a long-tenured, politically powerful adviser—she’s embraced my predissertation background as a nineteenth-century specialist, never mind my subsequent switch to the twentieth century. And Elizabeth acting as though she’s won the jackpot, adviser-wise, makes me forget that the time I sink into her thesis doesn’t help a whit toward my tenure. I see it, instead, as a chance to watch a brilliant mind at work. When Elizabeth talks, it’s as if literature is one of those antique glass clocks: all the minute, miraculous workings suddenly apparent. Muddy texts emerge from her hands clear and shedding light. Elizabeth is not only the youngest grad student in her cohort, but also, due to her habit of hatching an idea and drafting a searing chapter the same day, the closest to completion. The only drag on her dissertation process has been her tendency to indulge side projects, producing an impressive output of papers only peripherally related to her specialty. And even that idiosyncrasy, while it’s slowed her otherwise lightning progress, will pay off prodigiously when she goes on the job market. She’s already getting a reputation as one of the sharpest scholars in departmental memory. Rumor has it she started college at sixteen.

  “I have a few questions.” Elizabeth opens her notebook to a finely printed list and concentrates for a moment. “Do you think I ought to shore up my analysis with more responses from British critics?”

  Two years of Elizabeth’s lists have taught me that my job as her adviser is to keep her from obsessing over minutiae. “If you find a useful reference,” I say, “it’s worth anecdotal mention. Nothing more. Your argument is original, and it stands.”

  She takes a moment to write this down—presumably verbatim. Even I don’t think my every utterance worth immortalizing, but I’ve learned to hold my laughter. Teasing only embarrasses her. I wait as she scribbles, fingers clamped around a visibly tooth-marked pen. I like Elizabeth. It’s not only that she reminds me of my own grad school years (I, too, was the youngest student, and—while not so intellectually capricious as to be the subject of mythmaking by my fellow students—gave it my all, zipping through my dissertation in the time it took some of my fellow students to refine their topics). Elizabeth’s off-kilter earnestness makes me feel hopeful, and more at ease in a not entirely hospitable department.

  “Which poem do you plan to lead with?” Not that I need to know—I just enjoy Elizabeth’s recitations, and she doesn’t disappoint me.

  “This is my letter to the World/ That never wrote to Me.” Her voice is soft, her face rapt as a child’s.

  It takes twenty minutes to make our way through the rest of her questions. As soon as we’re done she shuts her notebook, jimmies it into her crammed backpack, and makes the usual polite inquiry. “How is work going on your tenure packet?”

  “Coming along.”

  “That’s good, good, I’m glad.” In her rush to clarify that she wasn’t prying, Elizabeth dons her jacket and leaves without thanking me for my time. By day’s end, I know, I will find in the dim cavity of my departmental mailbox an utterly unnecessary thank-you note.

  In fact my tenure packet is coming together more easily than I’d expected. My Literature of the American City anthology will be published this month, and, together with my first book and other publications and record of university service, this ought to put me in good stead. Seated at my desk, I tinker with tomorrow’s lecture, a consideration of American poetry’s relationship to interwar social change. For an opener, I’ve chosen Edwin Arlington Robinson: dark, but reliable bait for the depressive elements among my sophomores. Once I’ve gotten the skeptics’ attention, I can talk frankly about our contemporary indifference to poetry. Why else be a Ph.D., if not to stand as a lion at the gate of our cultural heritage? I’ll remind my audience that the most well known four words by an American poet were penned by beatnik Lew Welch, who supported himself with a day job in advertising. “Raid Kills Bugs Dead.” This ought to worry all of us. Hence my admittedly unfashionable course requirement. My undergraduates must memorize a poem, which they recite in the privacy of my office before the end of term. Their choice. The Cat in the Hat will do.

  Jeff gives a lazy thump on my office door. Pushing it open with his foot, he indicates the clock without a word. Four-thirty: the Bitching Hour. I leave my desk and join him in the hall.

  “How goes?”

  He shrugs. “Another day dredging the sewers of Brit lit.” With his narrow face, blue eyes, black hair, and the long, square sideburns accentuating his pale skin, Jeff is at once handsome and stern. For such a rail-thin man, he has a startlingly deep, gravelly voice. It commands respect, both in the classroom and out. Jeff was hired as junior faculty the year before I finished my dissertation. Back then I helped him learn the ropes; he’s been guiding me since. He’s the closest thing I have to a friend in the department.

  “Paper’s going that well?” I say, locking my office door behind me.

  He feels his shave. “It’ll work out.”

  Of course it will; Jeff’s papers always land in top-notch publications.

  We proceed in silence down the corridor, past colleagues’ doors—mostly closed—featuring bulletins advertising favored campus groups; cartoons that make arcane literary references and cartoons that mock them; brief poems; and, on the doors of two Romanticism profs, gravestone etchings. The department, occupying the whole of the building’s ninth floor, is laid out in a perfect square. Its circulatory system—this windowless hallway obviously designed for the comfort of submariners—holds the outside-facing offices of senior faculty and the inside offices of us junior folk, our walls brightened by posters. At one end of each corridor is a bulletin board crowded with undergraduate announcements and study-abroad notices—barely glanced at by the handful of students hunching through these halls, each in an apparent rush to get someplace else: a burly redhead whose wary expression implies the English Department is trying to kill him; a lank-haired junior (one of
my brightest twentieth-century students—we exchange waves) with a grim set to her face and a fluorescent T-shirt she wears at least once a week: STOP VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN. Near the end of the corridor we pass the chairman: round-faced, balding, smelling of tobacco. “Nice tie,” says Jeff solemnly.

  Patting the green pinstriped bow tie at his throat, the chairman nods his thanks.

  When we’ve rounded the corner, Jeff leans close. “Makes you feel sorry for the man.”

  “Because?”

  “Because anyone who wears a bow tie is confessing more than he ought. Neckties are just cloth arrows pointing to a man’s prized possession.”

  I match his conspiratorial murmur. “You think?”

  “Come, girl. Don’t be naive. Observe the cut of the cloth. Follow the arrow.” With a flourish he indicates his own tie, running down the navy plane of his shirt and terminating in a sharp V an inch above his belt. “Men who wear bow ties have, I’m sorry to say, no penis.”