I. Christensen, Carol, 1947– II. Christensen, Thomas, 1948– III. Title.
PQ7390.P76 L5813 2000
863′.64—dc21 00-042957
Design by Laura Hammond Hough
Grove Press
841 Broadway
New York, NY 10003
It is good for a man not to touch a woman …
—St. Paul, First Letter to the Corinthians
In the hands of my superior I must be malleable wax, to be shaped to any form, whether to write letters or to receive them.
—Ignatius de Loyola
NOCTURNAL BUTTERFLIES OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE
1
LIVADIA
Seven sheets of rice paper illuminated by afternoon light. The page in my outstretched hand was full of fine writing, the blue lines recalling the azure field that represents the sky in heraldry. The ink had flowed irregularly, swelling at commas, spilling over at points, giving the text a sort of rhyme, so that I could slide from top to bottom with ease.
She had folded the letter twice and sealed it in a white envelope (no airmail mark), which I had opened with a clumsy tear at one corner. I was pleased when I found that she had not used one of those awful writing pads sold in dime stores, with a bouquet of violets or lilacs on every sheet. This was a fine-grained paper, with faint veins and blemishes, obviously handcrafted, a lovely feel to it. This letter of hers, the soft rice paper, the round feminine forms, put me in a good humor. With this letter, I said to myself, I would feel less alone.
Going to my pension, I kept sticking my hand in my pocket to confirm that the envelope was still there, the letter V. had written on paper she had specially chosen, probably copying over a first draft with its mistakes and revisions, so she could send me … a perfumed letter? I stopped short. What if I hadn’t been able to smell it in the stiff breeze off the beach? I bent forward—not a thing. All right, this was no love letter she sent, but now I wanted more than a scent: to see her, to talk to her. She showed much subtlety in sending this letter. I had never gotten one like it.
In the beginning was the date, which she didn’t forget, as I often do. Over this head was a white space, creating a perfect visual balance, a clear sign of educated taste. My name had been written with an ornate capital and extra flourishes, tight swirls that showed long training in calligraphy, something I hadn’t suspected in her. On the rare occasions that I write letters, I usually number the pages by drawing a circle around the figures, in the top right-hand corner of the page. She put hers at the bottom of each page, with the numbers centered between long rules. A seven-page letter, and with such cramped writing it was really twice as long, but I read it all in a wink, the wind pulling it out of my hands, not getting the deepest sense of every passage, saving the speeches for a second reading, my chest filling with a gas lighter than air, floating toward the end along her violet lines, touching down on the signature, to check the identity of the sender again—Yes! Absolutely!—and flying home.
She had skipped the good-byes, spared me the usually empty promises, “I’ll write” or “You’ll hear from me.” And instead sent a letter with no word about her abrupt departure. It came as a shock, this reappearance, like when a person you thought you’d never see again, someone you thought was hundreds of miles away, suddenly comes back, says the flight was canceled, there’s a snowstorm in Strasbourg, the airport’s closed.
Should I tell her that I was on the the balcony at the Maritime Terminal in Odessa, that I saw her run away? “I did not know at the time,” I could write, “that you were the girl making a dash for the streetcar.”
It was getting darker every minute. I bounded up the stairs in the pension, kicked open the door to my room, and cleared the table (tossing a book and two shirts on the floor). “I’ll write a reply,” I told myself, “right now.” I felt truly inspired, like I could fill sheets till dawn.
From the balcony of the Maritime Terminal in Odessa, the two ships on the horizon had looked like they were about to collide, slowly sliding toward this meeting as if on a sea of oil, gray, black. As they started to dissolve into each other, someone came out on the balcony. It must be V., I thought, and did not turn around, but she walked away. It wasn’t V.
I saw a woman below, by the laurels along the esplanade that ran past the terminal. Hadn’t I seen that dress before? I pictured V. getting out of the boat after our escape from Istanbul, testing the boards of the gangplank with the toes of her high-heeled shoes, her white blouse reflecting the first rays of a sun that was still bright now, at five in the afternoon. I shifted my eyes back to the unknown woman walking in the shade of the laurels, the path striped by their shadows. I saw her run a little way to catch a streetcar, leaping onto its platform. The streetcar started to move away, raising a cloud of dust, turning the corner of the esplanade, so that it was perpendicular to me, disappearing into the distance, cables quivering.
My mind cleared, brightening like a southern sky, imagining V. standing at the mirror in the lady’s room, splashing water on her face, smoothing her hair with damp palms, touching up her lipstick, maybe thinking about buying a new swimsuit. I rolled my eyes heavenward. It looked like a wonderful day ahead, great weather in store. I was wrong: it rained three days straight. We were planning to take the ferry to Yalta and then drive to Livadia. How could I have guessed that V. was counting out rubles at that very moment, buying a plane ticket home (to a small town, ten thousand people)? Completely oblivious of that, I went back into the waiting room, wandering over to a bookseller (another retiree, same casual outfit, short-sleeved shirt and straw hat) to inspect his merchandise. I was bored from the long wait. If I had known I was losing V. when I picked up the book from his stand, I would have tossed it aside instantly, my rejection as fierce as my former drive to read, back when I could read the directions on emergency exits, the signs on city buses, the labels on jelly jars over and over again.
Lately I had been amazed at people who could get lost in a book, for example, during a St. Petersburg–Helsinki trip when I could think of nothing but the blue uniforms of the customs officers, my eyes gliding past the birches out the window, lakes and more lakes: Finland, the land of lakes (had it been a good idea to hide the musk sac in the pot of jam I left out on the lap-table?). I had watched the woman in the seat ahead of me open a book as dull (I managed to make out the title) as the correspondence between Sibelius and Aalto. The woman read until the words Passportny kontrol shouted in Russian at the far end of the car made her shut her book and me shut off my nerve endings, shrinking down like a mollusk into an armored shell, safe from the tricky questions of the customs agents, the iron hooks of their sneaky inspections.
These days, showing any interest, simply picking up a book, reading the title, opening it, meant cracking this stony cover of mine, already loosened up a bit, it’s true, by the last few days in Istanbul.
I went downstairs and sat on the bottom step outside the Maritime Terminal, reading in the late afternoon sun, warm breeze through the laurels, completely engrossed in No Return Address, a novel by W. S. Chase. A hair-raising scene of betrayal in Malibu; I looked up from my book and saw the light; at last it struck me (Chase’s fictional deception was the tip-off): V. had been gone more than an hour; I too had been betrayed. Now I saw myself (in a crane shot this time), a white point—brushed-linen shirt and pants, soft leather sandals—bounding up the steps of the Odessa Terminal, taking them two at a time, running into the waiting room, the door slamming behind me. For an instant I imagined that V. was waiting, asleep on the bench where we’d been sitting, her head resting on her arm. Must I add that when I saw the empty space, my hand automatically went to my pocket, checking for my wallet, the wad of bills?
Women