Dreams of Bread and Fire (4 page)

He said, It doesn’t make any sense, Ani. This first year of law school is going to be a grind. I have to stay focused on my work. You go to Paris, and if everything works out, I’ll come visit at Christmas.

If everything works out?

Ani, it would be crazy to commit to each other right now. I love you, but we’re going to be thousands of miles apart. Who knows what might happen?

Ani had felt the floors inside her body collapsing on top of each other. She started crying.

I’m afraid I’ll never love anyone the way I love you, she said.

I’m afraid no one will ever love me the way you do, he replied.

That night after Asa fell asleep she studied his handsome face and watched his chest rise and fall. She wanted him dead.

She returned to Boston and prepared for Paris, sure that his eye had already locked onto a new target, some pert law student from California. But then the night before Ani left town he had called her family’s house. With passion in his voice, he said he wanted to make a commitment because he loved her and didn’t want to lose her.

What were the other words he used? Monogamy. Fidelity. Trust.

Ani’s dumb, greedy heart had opened like a lily.

you cannot teach a donkey to become a horse

When Ani arrived at the Saint-Ambroise Cinema, Michael, a German film student who was in the Sondage seminar, was waiting outside. Her new friend had blond hair, a black leather bomber jacket, and a girlfriend in Munich.

“
Bonsoir,
” Michael said, kissing her on one cheek, then the other, and repeating this gesture of friendly greeting again.

This whole business of social kissing made Ani nervous. She either pulled away too soon or left her face hanging out there too long. In France the older generation grazed each cheek once. In Amsterdam, as she found out from a Dutch acquaintance, the custom was three times. Among young Parisians it was four.
Quatre bises,
it was called.

They went into the theater. In the black-and-white film, Katharine Hepburn played Elizabeth Taylor’s aunt and Montgomery Clift’s eyes glittered in his gaunt face. Under a burning sun, Elizabeth Taylor’s dress flared white against a stone wall. Then came the boys with sharpened tin cans, or were they knives? Ani felt dizzy when they emerged from the darkness into the street. Michael insisted on walking her home. He had his hands shoved deep in his jacket pockets, but they were walking so close that his elbow brushed against hers.

Michael wondered out loud about how this movie had to do with what Sondage called the Infinite. Ani thought Sondage’s notion of the Infinite was akin to Zed’s idea of the Semiotic, by which she meant the maternal body, the chaos and cacophony of somatic experience. Michael disagreed. He thought it had more to do with the traditional idea of the Sublime. He began to elaborate on the concept. Ani tried to listen, but he lost her when he plunged back to Ancient Greece.

They reached a large intersection where Michael, who was still lecturing, steered Ani by the elbow across the street. His fingers sent little pulsing messages to various points in her body. She gently withdrew her arm as they reached the sidewalk. She had an understanding with Asa.

The first time Ani and Asa had sex it was out at a ramshackle log cabin on the river. Asa was sharing the place for the summer with some friends who were climbers and Outward Bound instructors. Earlier in the week, Asa had taken Ani to the Outward Bound ropes course. Tied onto a rope that Asa secured from below, Ani made her way through a series of maneuvers that landed her on a platform high in the branches of an oak. She was now expected to jump to a platform on another tree.

Come on, Ani, Asa called. You’re doing great. Don’t think about it, just jump.

She guessed she was higher than the rooftop of the family house. It seemed that the space between the two platforms was the same as the length of the Oriental rug in the front hall. She imagined her grandmother saying,
Vhat you doing up tree like some kind of crazy squirrel
?

Asa squinted up at her. Come on, Ani. Trust yourself. Trust me.

He looked so handsome and small down there. She took a deep breath and jumped. Alighting on the other platform, she wrapped her arms around the tree and felt her pulse against its rough bark.

A few days later she went to the campus infirmary to get birth control. She tried to be cool, but her palms were sweating as she listened to the various options and watched the nurse pointing to a model of the female reproductive organs. Ani took the prescription to the drugstore on Main Street, mortified at the appraising glance the pharmacist gave her when he handed her the box.

There was a big gathering at the log cabin that night. Ani didn’t recognize many people at the party, but she wanted to show Asa how self-sufficient she was. She stood barefoot in the yard listening to a burly mountaineer describing the aurora borealis over Alaska. Everyone clutched a beer bottle, but Ani hated beer. She thought it tasted like coins soaked in yeasty water. Joints circulated. Somebody was stuffing hash into a wooden pipe. Night had fallen, and there were fireflies signaling across the meadow.

Asa beckoned to her from the river’s edge. He and his friend Joe had dragged a silver canoe to the shore and were about to go for a paddle. Asa took the stern, Joe manned the bow, and Ani sat cross-legged on the canoe floor as they glided off.

There were no clouds and the stars stretched like a net across the inverted bowl of the sky. Asa and Joe smoked a joint that Ani handed between them. She leaned back to take in the constellations. The only ones she recognized were the Big and Little Dippers, but Joe had been an Eagle Scout and pointed out a dozen others. A streak of light dropped across the starlit fabric and disappeared.

Look, Ani said, a falling star.

Another star plummeted, and another.

When they returned to the cabin, people were sitting in a circle on the braided rug in the living room. There were candles all around, their flames flickering in the breeze coming off the river. Asa and Joe sauntered to the kitchen and began to forage in the fridge. Ani went to the bathroom, where she wrestled with the diaphragm. It kept springing open at the wrong moment, and she almost dropped it into the toilet.

She passed through the kitchen, where Asa and Joe were at the counter eating chocolate ice cream from the carton with spoons. Ani said she was going to bed and glanced at Asa, but his eyes were dull. When he smiled at her his lips caught on his teeth.

Just as well, she thought. He’s still stoned.

The cotton sheet felt cool against her skin. She heard laughter coming from the front room, thinking she recognized Asa’s voice in the tangle of sounds. A crack of light glowed at the bottom of the door. Ani rolled onto her side and listened to crickets pulsing in the tall black trees outside.

She had no idea what time it was when Asa slipped onto the futon beside her. It seemed as though she had been asleep for hours. His hand brushed the crest of her hip and found it bare. Usually she wore a T-shirt and panties. They had been sleeping in the same bed for a while, teetering between passion and frustration.

He struggled out of his boxers, pressing toward her. His mouth tasted of pot and felt like warm, honeyed velvet. Then he was on top of her and inside her and Ani thought with relief, Finally it’s done. He pulled out suddenly and she felt a thick wet gob slide down the inside of her thigh.

What did you do that for? Ani wiped her leg with a corner of the sheet.

Asa leaned up on one elbow. What do you mean?

It was so dark in the room she could barely see his face. I have a diaphragm in.

Why didn’t you tell me? he asked.

I thought you knew, she said.

I’m supposed to be psychic all of a sudden?

You mean you did that thinking we had
no
birth control? You jerk. She flopped over so her back was to him.

He began to massage the base of her skull and neck. You want to do it again?

The next morning Ani studied Asa’s perfect sleeping face on the pillow beside her. Her heart contracted with fear.

Nothing has changed, she assured herself.

In a subterranean recess of Ani’s mind was lodged the belief that she and Asa were now married.

Ani and Michael turned into the Palais-Royal. They strolled along the stone arcade, past the shop that sold lead toy soldiers, the interior design boutique, the tearoom, and the restaurant where Napoleon and Josephine had dined. The gilt letters painted into the black wood above the entrance said
LE GRAND VEFOUR
. Ani wondered if she’d ever be able to afford to eat there. Maybe when Asa visited in December she’d be able to convince him to take her there instead of to Le Meurice, the hotel restaurant his father favored.

The next day Ani had no classes. Reading through a pamphlet listing the smaller metropolitan museums, she came across a description of the Musée Arménien de France. Just the place to go on a cloudy homesick afternoon. Ani rode the metro to the Porte Dauphine and walked along stately avenue Foch until she found a small plaque affixed to a tall wrought-iron fence. She pushed open the gate, crossed the graveled yard, and entered the grand building, climbing a broad staircase to the second floor.

“
Bonjour, mademoiselle,
” said an old man sitting behind a desk. He had flying gray eyebrows, a long curved nose, and thick wire-rimmed glasses. He looked like one of Baba’s friends, but oddly this made Ani feel shy. Maybe he would speak to her in Armenian and she would fumble around for words. She wasn’t in the mood for speaking French with him either.

“
Bonjour, monsieur.
” Ani moved quickly past the desk so as not to engage further conversation.

The museum consisted of two rooms, the high walls covered with oil paintings by Armenian artists, mostly portraits and landscapes, among them a number of representations of Mount Ararat. The dark wood display cases were filled with artifacts and typed white labels describing them: gold earrings from Urartu, an embroidered wedding towel from Moush, lace doilies made in Ainjar by survivors of the defense of Musa Dagh. Ani lingered over the illuminated manuscripts. She studied the old black-and-white photographs of Armenian revolutionaries, or fedayeen, from the end of the Ottoman period.

In the photos the fedayeen were posed in various groupings, some holding rifles, their chests encircled with or crossed by bullet-filled bandoliers. There was one figure she was drawn to, a military leader in a white sheepskin cap, a rifle in one hand and binoculars in the other. His handsome face radiated intelligence and resolve. The caption below explained that he had been killed in battle defending his town from Turkish assault. A hero and a martyr.

As Ani passed by the desk on her way out of the museum, the old man said to her in French, “Excuse me, mademoiselle. Are you Armenian?”

Ani thought, My grandparents are Armenian. My church was Armenian. Most of my friends growing up were Armenian. But my aspiration was to be upper-middle-class American. So what does that make me?

“My mother is Armenian,” is what she said.

He nodded and smiled. “You look Armenian.”

white teeth, black heart

Dear Ani,

I’m writing to say that I won’t be coming to Paris for Christmas. I feel bad doing this by letter, but it would be too painful to talk with you right now. This has nothing to do with anyone else. May is still going out with her boyfriend at Stanford, so I’m caught in a triangle. Nothing is stable at this point. It’s just that I don’t think I can take the roller coaster you and I have been on these past few years. My needs have changed, and I can’t deal with my own ambivalence anymore. I still love you. I had to stop writing for a few minutes because I was crying. I think we’ll both be happier this way. I will always be your friend.

Love, Asa

Ani read the letter twice before the words began to sink in. Dumped by mail. What an ignominious ending. Asa had probably felt off the hook since the moment that he dropped his cowardly letter in the mailbox. She checked the postmark on the envelope. Eight days. For eight days he had enjoyed an Ani-less existence while she played the chump.

Ani raced to the nearby post office, shut herself into a telephone booth, and dialed Asa’s apartment in Seattle. She gripped the receiver tightly as the line rang. She had no idea what she would say when she heard his voice.

“He’s asleep right now. May I take a message?” the young woman who answered the phone asked politely.

“This is an emergency. You need to wake him up,” Ani said.

A groggy Asa came to the telephone. “Hello?”

“Asa Willard, you gutless creep,” Ani said.

“Ani?” he asked.

“That was May who answered the phone, wasn’t it?”

“This has nothing to do with her. I love you, Ani, but we’re no good together.”

“You said you wanted to spend the rest of your life with me,” Ani reminded him, as though he were an amnesiac. “Are you in love?”