Good on Paper (26 page)

I said none of these things. I stood at his door, hand on the jamb as if feeling for tremors.

He and Andi left together, Andi looking over her shoulder with a worried expression. I blew her my usual hurricane kiss, sent with all my motherly might; she, as usual, pretended it landed with great force on her cheek. But she knew nothing was usual.

Still wearing my father’s bathrobe, I brought my coffee to the study. Romei’s next section had arrived, together with a faxed photo of Romei in a too-small chair next to a hospital bed, where a small woman—Esther, presumably—lay lost in her bedclothes and a tangle
of tubes. Above Romei on the wall, a crucifix. On a table to his right, a laptop, a printer, a fax machine.

He was working in his wife’s hospital room? His wife was dying and he was writing?

Of course: the next pages of
Vita Nuova
were about death (or, as Romei put it, more precisely, “The Harrowing”), when the hero makes his obligatory visit to the underworld. Poor Dante! The poetics he’d stored against his ruin were about to collapse. First, the death of Beatrice’s father—a small death by cosmic standards, but when Dante learns of it, he grieves so much (for her sake) that the ladies who attend her speak of
his
grief,
his
suffering. He is so grieved he becomes
gravely
ill. On the ninth day, so weak he cannot move (corpselike, in other words), he understands that his beloved, too, will one day die. He envisions her death, and his own. Birds fall from the sky, the earth trembles, the sun grows dark, and the stars begin to weep, as Beatrice’s soul, accompanied by angels, ascends to heaven. His cries break through his dream, he is crying!

He looks dead!
say the ladies—as if we’d missed the point.

When he rises from his sick bed, at long last, he thinks he can return to Life as Usual: he writes poems of praise, he prattles on about figures of speech—but Death stalks him, pulling him ever deeper into understanding, eventually taking from him everything he holds dear, which is to say, his muse, his sense of purpose, his artistic certainty, his faith in love—for Death has his eye on Beatrice: she will be the next to go.

Her death is noble, as it happens, but anticlimactic: it can’t compete with the one Dante has imagined for her. So he doesn’t write it, saying, instead, that it isn’t relevant to his theme. Whatever that means.

I didn’t want to read about Romei’s harrowing, or what passed as such. Esther’s illness, the loss of hope. There wasn’t enough hope to go around. I wished I had some PT.

I thought about dusting Andi’s Nancy Drews, or going to Cuppa Joe’s. Instead, I visited the Flying Girl.

You’re being a child, she said.

Speaks the child! I said. What do you know about the loss of hope?

I feel hope, she said, so I can imagine losing it.

I wish I could be like you, I said.

You are me. Silly rabbit! she said. Go! Read what the man has to say.

I brought the pages to Andi’s room, wrapped myself in her quilt.

But again, Romei—or should I say, Esther?—surprised me.

She left him. Twenty-five years after her husband left them, she left Romei. While he was in Kiev, being feted by the Writers’ Union in a language he couldn’t understand (an absurdity that occasions a villanelle: Romei asking repeatedly for an interpreter, his hosts replying in nonsense syllables borrowed from what we understand to be a Ukrainian nursery rhyme). He returns to find Esther gone, her suitcase and favorite clothing gone, her passport gone, mementos from her lovers gone. A note on the fridge reads:
Gone to the U.S. Back soon
.

Her first visit to the U.S. in a quarter century. Romei can’t imagine what occasioned this trip—and for
trip
he uses
scampagnata
for its suggestion of “an outing in the countryside” (
campagna
), an irony that points to his unwillingness to read the irony of Esther’s note, to accept that she has left him. Frantic, concerned, he thinks, for her safety, he contemplates going after her—but where? The U.S. is a big country, and he’s due to read in Dubrovnik. She has to have gone to New York. He sends a telegram to the one person there he considers a friend.

Benny. Called here, with quaint brevity,
the bookseller
. He begs Benny to look for her, tells him she’s unwell, hints at emotional instability. Benny develops a plan to flush her out, a colloquium on the
Song of Songs
. Poets, biblical scholars, a translator, even an artist or two. Romei promises to foot the bill when his ship comes in.

Benny and Esther have never met, so Romei must describe her. But he remembers only what she looked like at thirty, he has to
imagine
what she looks like now. He doesn’t know what she likes to wear, how she does her hair, he’s haunted by images of the distant past—Esther chewing her finger on a park bench, watching him watch her, standing elegant and tall, a highball in her hand, pushed up against a wall, responding to his kisses,
yes, yes
, vomiting on the cobblestones. In a mad flurry, he writes up these scenes,
scenes we recognize because we’ve read them before
, and faxes them to Benny, so he might, through them, recognize Esther.

Benny has a better idea: he asks all who attend to wear a name tag.

And there she is, Esther Romei. Wearing stirrup pants, a silk top the tentative color of an April sky, a scarf over her hair. She doesn’t look unstable, she looks radiant, talking with her friends—a laughing man named Kendrick Weiner-Peshat, whom Benny remembers from a Midrash conference; a rotund woman named Miriam Remez, who may be a poet; rabbinical students named Marty Drash and Hannah Sod, holding notebooks, pens, tubby bottles of Perrier.

You are mistaken, Romei says when Benny calls. That is not my Esther.

She sends her regards. We’re having dinner tonight.

Thus began one of the strangest stories I have ever read.

Benny feeds Romei information about Esther, her vibrant life in New York, the classes she takes—classical Hebrew at the university, Talmud at a women’s yeshiva. One gets the sense that, amused, she feeds Benny stories to pass on.

Romei is stunned. This is not his Esther! Who is this woman? How can a person change so much, and overnight? She has to have met another man! The idea sickens him. He takes to his bed, or so he tells Benny. Esther laughs: she is not changed, not one bit. Silly man!

In daily faxes, Benny assures him that Esther is well, she’s cut her hair short, taken up photography. They meet at Joe’s to discuss her translation, which she’s picked up again: she frets about the
hapax legomena
—words that appear just once, making their meaning difficult to determine.

Romei is such an ass, Benny observes: How could he let this woman get away?

Romei accuses Benny of having an affair with his wife.

Don’t be absurd, Benny says.

I’m coming to get her, Romei says. I’ll cancel the Goethe-Institut readings.

Don’t, Benny says. I strongly advise you not to. She doesn’t want to see you.

What’s his name? Romei raves, and calls Benny
Galeotto
, using Dante’s language to accuse him of introducing Esther to a paramour.

You’re jealous, Benny writes, but of what? You know nothing about your wife!

Romei slumps into a chair. Benny’s right. Esther is a stranger—a fascinating, enchanting, mysterious stranger, who’s left him, probably for good. He sits a long while in his chair, not shaving, getting up only to piss in the sink and to admit Emilio, neighborhood vintner and one-time lover of Esther. He brings table wine,
pizza rustica
, souvenirs of Esther for night-long drinking sessions that leave Romei dehydrated and sentimental.

His imagination is useless. He sits to write but the paper laughs at him. Fool! What do you see when you open your eyes, when you walk out the door? Yourself, obviously!

Does she have money, he writes finally. I’m about to sell the English rights to
Baby Talk
.

It turns out Esther has been left something by her mother, who on her death bed had regretted having disowned her. Esther went to the Hebrew Home, accompanied by her rabbi; she cried when the matron said they’d disposed of her mother’s effects. Naturally we thought she was alone, fifteen years with no visitors. Besides, there was only a book or two, some photos—yes, one may have been of you, how were we to know?

Don’t send money, Benny says, send something else. She may not be unresponsive. I think she still loves you.

Heartened, Romei shaves, kicks Emilio out the door, tries to imagine what he might send.

He can think of nothing.

What about some poems? he finally asks.

Heavens, no! Benny says.

Disheartened, Romei thinks some more.

Give me a hint, he says eventually.

Jesus, Benny says. Can’t you think of a way to tell Esther you love her? You do love her, don’t you?

Romei, to his astonishment, realizes he does. He flings open the door to his apartment, strides into the piazza, is stunned by the sun shining onto his face, through the water of the fountain, glinting off the tesserae on the facade of Santa Maria in Trastevere. Last he knew it
had been winter. But no, it was June! In a fanciful passage reminiscent of one of Calvino’s folktales, the mendicant Romei asks a series of unlikelies for advice on how to win his Esther back.

Force her to stay, says Efesto, the crippled blacksmith.

Buy her something extravagant, says Hera, the drag queen.

Take her on a second honeymoon, says Mercurio, the travel agent.

Massage her feet, whispers Cytherea, the “comfort woman.” Tell her she’s beautiful.

She knows she’s beautiful, she will not be told what to do, she can go anywhere and get for herself anything she wants—why would she need me? he asks. What can I possibly give her?

What about understanding? Benny says.

But I
don’t
understand, Romei says.

Exactly! Benny says.

Romei pulls his chair up to the table, does the only thing he knows how to do: he writes. A rambling letter in which he asks Esther to come home: he’ll change, he says, he should be given another chance—but his words sound flat and whiny. He writes a dialogue between them, which quickly becomes a monologue in which Esther berates him for his inattention, his mistaken assumptions, his infernal self-absorption, asks why on earth she would ever want him back. People don’t learn new tricks, she says in English, especially not an old dog like you.

This is not the offering he wishes to make. Esther already knows that he’s an ass. He puts down his pen. How to understand, how to offer understanding?

He picks up his pen.

I am Esther, he writes. I am fifty-five. I am beautiful, but I don’t know it.

He will write her. He will write her skin, her pleasures, her habits and desires. He offers her stories he remembers her telling—about a brick house in Connecticut, a terrier named Sire, a roommate who dated Jack Kerouac—and when he runs out of stories, he interviews ex-lovers, colleagues at the school where she worked. His reputation as an eccentric disposes them to answer his questions: does she give change to the mandolin player; is she popular with the students; what
did she do during her lunch hour; does she prefer pistachio or
nocciola
. He gathers facts, trivial and profound, also the answers to questions he didn’t think to ask: she plays practical jokes, she has nightmares about being trapped in a trolley with no brakes.

Benny helps.

Does she have green eyes or blue? Romei asks.

Brown, Benny says.

She tells of the loss of her family, her anguish, her feelings of impotence, all magnified by Romei, who is so exiled from his own loss that he can’t help her. He writes of the panic she feels during one of her episodes, he tries to imagine what it would be like to have your body turn against you, to suffer ailments you cannot understand, to lose your hair, to awaken with rashes across your face, to be unable to move, so great is your fatigue.

These “first-person” reflections are mixed eventually with third-person views of Esther in New York. He imagines her in Talmud class, describes with loving attention her comments about oxen falling into pits, which detail, tossed off in a line or two, must have required hours of research. He rejoices in the success he imagines for her: the rabbi, stern-faced, pulls his pointed beard and mutters,
Excellent, excellent
; Esther flushes with pleasure. She wishes she—

But the section ended here, mid-sentence. Had Romei not sent the ending? Did he win her back? He must have, because there she was, but how? How had he done it?

I sat up on Andi’s bed, took a deep breath. Esther had to have been touched by this effort—it was monumental. She’d be overwhelmed by his devotion, his deep interest in the specifics of her life. She loved him, Benny said; of course she’d give him another chance!

I was rooting for Romei—how had that happened? I found his borrowing of her first person convincing—moving, even: the lover walking in the footsteps of the beloved, demonstrating his willingness to adopt her perspective, wanting to understand. He’d mingled their first-person accounts rather as the woman and man share their stage in the
Song
—except his first person had become a third person, trailing behind her. As if he didn’t merit a first person, as if self-effacement in service of the beloved was, finally, the point.

I liked Esther, too, now, laughing and learning her way through the City, I admired her bravery, her resourcefulness, I liked Romei for making me like her. She’d come alive, finally, not through praise, or exposure, but through detail and an empathic, imaginative leaping. But where was Romei’s harrowing? Yes, he realizes he’s been a fool, he even takes to his bed in a parody of Dante’s suffering. Unless the harrowing was Esther’s? Maybe now that their points of view had mingled, the story no longer belonged just to him: Your harrowing is my harrowing?

I brought the pages back to the study, where two more awaited me. According to the time and date stamp, they’d arrived a half hour apart—and another was on its way! Romei was writing his pages on the fly, writing a single draft and faxing it to me! Not pausing for breath. What other explanation could there be? Unbelievable—not just because of the cheek involved, but because the writing was so damned good. But why?