“Are you ready, dear?” she asked. It seemed an innocent question, but he’d been married long enough to know it meant she thought they should have left ten minutes ago.
“Yeah,” he answered, grabbing his sweater and car keys and heading for the door.
She gave him a quick checkover. “Do you think that shirt’s dressy enough for a concert?”
“Sure. This isn’t the opera, just a girls’ chorus.”
Her lips tightened, but she said nothing more. She picked up a shawl and they went out to the car.
They didn’t talk on the short drive to the college. He found a parking place on the shady, tree-lined campus and they walked to the concert hall. A number of couples and families were climbing the stone steps. A pretty coed in an evening gown stood at the door, taking tickets and handing out programs.
The hall was already nearly full, but they found seats fairly close to the stage on the far right side. He glanced around at the other patrons as he draped his sweater over the chair back. Mostly middle-aged couples like themselves, he noted.
“Good crowd,” he said to his wife. “But I suppose a lot are families of the performers.”
“Probably,” she replied, “but the girls’ chorus has a very good reputation. They’re just back from a concert tour. They’re thinking of making a CD, I hear.”
“Is that right?” He was encouraged. He hadn’t particularly wanted to come. Choral music wasn’t his favorite anyway, and he usually liked men’s or mixed voices better than women’s, which he felt tended to shrillness. He hadn’t expected much quality. After all, they were only college amateurs. But June had wanted to go, and they both liked to support local arts programs. If nothing else, he thought, at least college girls were nice to look at.
The lights dimmed just a moment after they sat down. There was a moment of expectant silence, then two angelic voices, high and clear as trumpets, soared from the back of the hall. He felt a shiver of pleasure. Then two lines of girls in white dresses appeared at the rear doors and processed slowly up the side aisles. It was a very effective and dramatic entrance; as each pair of girls entered the hall, their voices swelled the music until it filled the hall. But it took courage and competence on the part of the singers. As each girl passed their row, her voice could be clearly distinguished from the rest. The voices were pure and clear and perfectly together. It was something monophonic and ancient, probably a chant, he thought.
Very much moved, he looked up at the girls’ faces as they passed. They were very young and of all shapes and sizes and colors, but they seemed transfigured by the music, blended together into something greater. When the first girls reached the front, the whole chorus stopped and turned in to face the audience and finished the piece standing motionless. A short plump blonde stood at the end of their row, singing like a meadowlark, clear and confident. He watched her shining face as she sang, and felt himself moved by the ancient music. She could have been a medieval nun, he thought, singing this very same music a millennium ago. When the final long clear unison died away there was a hushed moment, a collective indrawn breath from the audience, which struck him as a greater compliment than the burst of applause that followed. The chorus filed silently to their places on the risers.
After the sublime opening, the program in his opinion grew weaker. They tried to do too varied a repertoire. Mixed with the more traditional choral music, there were some creaky show tunes and an over-arranged version of Yesterday, then the obligatory Scott Joplin number with a bit too much syncopation and soul for these mostly middle class white girls to carry off. His attention wandered. He read the program notes; examined the architecture of the hall. Then he began idly studying the performers, going down the line of faces one by one.
He was struck again by how young they all looked, their faces as yet unlined by life. When he had been in college the women had seemed so mature and sophisticated. Now they looked barely more than adolescent. Their bodies were fully mature; their high young breasts bulging against their white gowns, but the faces of many of them were still those of children. Some still had teen-age acne; others were plump with baby fat. But a few were very attractive, having already made the transition to full womanhood. He picked out his two favorites in the front row; a petite redhead on the left and a sultry-looking brunette right in front of them. He started scanning the back row, only their heads visible over the shoulders of the girls in front. He came to the fourth from the left and stopped, transfixed.
She was absolutely stunning, with large wide-set eyes, full lips, and high cheekbones framed in ash-blonde hair parted in the middle and hanging long over her shoulders. Her face was very serious and earnest; her gaze fixed on the conductor. He couldn’t imagine how he had not noticed her for so long. Not only was she by far the most beautiful girl on the stage, but she looked exactly like a woman he had loved back in college.
Instantly he was swept back to another performance almost thirty years before, when he had sat in the college auditorium and watched his girlfriend Ann DuBois in a dance recital. He knew nothing about modern dance, but to his untrained eye she seemed lithe and accomplished and polished. She looked very different, even exotic, in her dramatic theater make-up and with her hair pulled severely back. Unlike most of the other women dancers, she had a full womanly figure that made her the sexiest thing he had ever seen in a leotard. She was tall and athletic and moved with an easy grace, perfectly comfortable in her body in a way that few other twenty-year-olds were. When her number was over he applauded so enthusiastically that she caught his eye from her bow and gave him a severe look.
Their lovemaking that night was fierce and prolonged. He kept remembering her up there on the stage in the brilliant lights, every curve of her perfect figure revealed by her flesh-colored leotard. He knew that every male in the theater had wanted her, and here she was naked and compliant in his arms. But she was more than compliant. He had had several lovers by that time, but Ann had been something very different. Her lovemaking was both skilled and inventive, and she had taught him many things about love and sex. He had been completely in love with her from the first night they met, and every time he looked at her he felt lucky. He was sure he had found the woman of his dreams, and he was blissfully happy.
Thinking back on it now, that spring and summer in the old farmhouse with Ann were the happiest days of his life. He had been devastated when she suddenly announced that she was leaving at the end of the summer. Her family was from France, and she was going back to finish her studies. He pleaded with her to stay at least until they graduated the following June, but she would not be dissuaded. He had offered to drop out of school and go with her to France. She flatly refused to consider it. He proposed different plans for meeting during the holidays, of spending the summer together in Greece, but she refused each one, until in his hurt and anger he had blurted out, “You don’t seem to want us to be together. Are you trying to get away from me or something?”
She had stared sadly at him a long moment, her eyes searching his. “Yes,” she finally said. “I guess I am.”
He felt as if he had been kicked in the groin. The fact of their love was so obvious to him that he had never thought to ask if she felt the same way. At first he would not accept it. He had begged her for reasons, swore to change whatever she didn’t like about him, promised to give her whatever space or freedom she felt she needed. But she would not discuss it. All she would say was that she had simply fallen out of love with him. It was nothing he had done, no flaw in his character, nothing he could change. She had loved him for a while, and now she did not, and there was nothing either of them could do about it.
Thinking back on it from this distance, he realized he should have walked out right then. But he had been twenty years old, wildly romantic, and deeply in love. He had sacrificed his pride to be with her. They had lived together another three weeks, with his misery eating away at him. He would look at her and his eyes would fill with tears. Several times he had had to leave the dinner table because she looked so beautiful in the candlelight. They had continued to make love, but it was different now; strained, awkward, and after a while he was horrified to find himself no longer capable of it, the first time that had ever happened to him. Finally he took her to the airport and saw her to her gate. He had stood there, wanting to crush her to him, or rage at her, or smash something. He wanted to say or do something, something profound or clever or witty or romantic that would make her change her mind, make her see how wrong it was to go. In the end he did nothing at all. They embraced once, fiercely, then she was gone, out of his life forever. He remembered seeing the sun glinting from the plane’s windows as it lifted off, and wondered if she were looking back for him or if her thoughts were already on France ahead of her. He still wondered.
His senior year had been a misery and his grades had suffered. But as time passed the pain had eventually faded. He’d found other lovers, moved on with his life. He graduated, married, taken a job on the West Coast. But for years afterwards he’d kept seeing Ann in other women — a flash of blonde hair in a passing car, a laugh at a party, the curve of a hip by a pool. Each time he’d been filled again with a poignant sense of irreparable loss. He couldn’t stop wondering what had happened to her. Was she still in France? Was she living in an artist’s garret? Was she dancing? Was she married to some fat businessman with a batch of kids? Had she found happiness? Did she ever think of him?
Ten years later, when he and his first wife planned a European trip, he’d insisted they spend most of the three weeks in France. It had been a terrible mistake. He couldn’t help studying every woman he saw, searching for Ann’s face in the crowds. Of course his wife could hardly fail to notice. She thought he was just ogling the girls, and eventually confronted him angrily about it on a street corner in Montmartre. But even after this scene he was constantly sneaking peeks at every woman on the street. The trip had ended badly, and sometimes he thought it had been the beginning of the divorce that came a few years later.
But he had thought he was over all that. He was remarried, in a new town, a good career. He hadn’t given Ann a thought in months. But now it all came back as fresh as that day at the airport. He felt again the tightness in his chest, like a fist clenched around his heart. The feelings burned through him again; the hurt, the helplessness, the fruitless search for a reason. They had been perfect for each other, and they had been in love. Of that he was sure. He’d been with many women since and learned a great deal about loving and hurting and deceit. But he was still certain that she had returned his love. He could not have been wrong about that.
He looked up at the beautiful young woman on the stage, that intent face, that confident, self-assured grace; and he felt tears streaming down his face. He knew of course that it wasn’t his Ann; she’d be a woman of fifty now, if she were even alive. But this girl was so like her – the long neck, the chin held high, the serene eyes transported by the music. Seeing her up there brought back the hollowness, the unbearable sense of loss that had dogged him ever since that summer day. People liked to dream that somewhere out there was the ideal person for them, their one perfect match, if they could only somehow find them. But he had found her, and they had been perfect. And he knew that he had been wrong to let her go; that he should have followed her, should not have given up. That was it; that’s what the tears were for – the lost chance. There was Ann up there on the stage, still young, still perfect; for her it wasn’t yet too late. He wanted to leap up on the stage and take her in his arms and squeeze her so hard it would press out those years of mediocre life and mediocre love that stood between them. With a chilling certainty, he finally acknowledged what he never admitted to himself: if he could, he would discard the whole last thirty years of his life – his wives, his friends, his house, his career – to be with Ann again.
His wife glanced over at him and stared in amazement when she saw the tears running down his face and dripping onto his shirt. He started guiltily at being seen in such a helpless vulnerable state, and also at the thoughts he’d just been having about June. But she was frightened.
“John, what is it?” she gasped. “Are you all right?” “No… no, I’m fine,” he replied, too loudly, for someone hushed him. “It’s… it’s the music,” he whispered more quietly. “It’s… so beautiful.” Someone else hissed at him to be quiet.
June looked askance at him, knowing his opinion of choral music. But she rummaged in her purse, fussing about opening a packet of tissues and handing him one. He felt embarrassed now. They were causing a mild disturbance. Several people had turned to look at them, and he didn’t want everyone seeing him with tears streaming down his face. He wiped his face quickly and smiled apologetically at the man beside him, who was glaring at him. He gestured to the stage to indicate that he had been overcome by the music. But when he looked up at the girl again, he found that she was staring right at him, her attention apparently caught by the disturbance. His eyes met hers, and she blanched. Her eyes widened in dismay, and her singing faltered and stopped.
She appeared completely unsettled. She looked back at her conductor in alarm, but seemed unable to find her place. Eventually she resumed singing, but all her poise was gone. Her eyes kept flicking back to him where he sat staring up at her. He fidgeted anxiously through the next pieces, studying her expressions, her mannerisms, every moment more convinced. She didn’t just remind him of Ann, she was Ann, looking exactly as she had the last time he’d seen her. He knew it was insane, but he had to talk to her.
When the last piece was finally done, he bolted to his feet. “Sorry, dear,” he said. “Have to get to the rest room. Bit of an emergency. Meet you in the lobby.” She looked up at him in amazement, but he was already pushing his way to the end of the aisle. He hurried to the lobby before anyone else and looked around wildly. A door on one side opened onto a corridor leading along the side of the auditorium. He trotted along until he came to a big double door. He could hear the chatter of girls’ voices beyond. He went through into a shadowy area in the wings, and there they were, talking and laughing excitedly. He scanned their faces quickly, but she was not there.
He edged around the side of the stage, trying to find that glowing blonde hair. A few of the girls glanced at him curiously, but no one spoke to him. He grew desperate as the girls started to disperse. He knew June would be wondering what had happened to him. The whole experience took on the nightmare quality of a fruitless search, when the object of desire is always just out of reach.
He moved through another doorway with a group of the performers, and then he saw her at the end of a corridor. She was not running, but she was obviously hurrying away. He tried to press past the other girls, but they were talking together so animatedly that he could not break through. He craned his head to keep her in sight. She reached a doorway and glanced back. If she saw him she gave no sign. Then she was gone.
“Excuse me,” he said, pushing past the laughing girls. They exclaimed at his rudeness, but he ignored them and hurried down to the doorway. It opened onto steps down to a parking lot with the first concertgoers just streaming in from the front of the theater. He stopped, catching his breath, and scanned the shadowy parking lot. Then he caught a glimpse of a white dress in a beam of light from a window. She was out on the lawn, flitting through the shadows beneath the big trees. He leaped down the steps and ran after her, weaving through the parked cars and out onto the grass, now wet with dew. He could feel his heart pounding with the unaccustomed exertion. He raced on, following the pale figure through the trees, feeling his extra pounds bouncing around his middle. He ran until he was breathless, terrified that he would miss her and never see her again. Finally he had to stop and lean against the rough bark of an oak, gasping for air. He bent forward and put his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath and feeling only a welling up of despair. What a fool he was! What if someone should ask him what he was doing chasing a twenty-year-old coed around the campus in the dark? What would he say — that he thought he had known her thirty years ago? He was a pathetic old fool, chasing memories and seeing ghosts.
When his heart had stopped pounding at last, he pushed himself up and found her standing not ten feet away. She was in deep shadow, backlit by the bright lights from the concert hall. He couldn’t see her face, only the outline of her body through the white dress and the shine of her hair like a halo. He simply looked at her and panted, too out of breath to speak.
“I was afraid for you,” she said with a pronounced but indeterminate accent. “You should not be running like that at your age.”
Her accent was different, but the soft breathy voice was the same. He nodded wordlessly, holding up his hand for time catch his breath. He realized he was also stalling. Now that he’d found her, he had no idea what to say. Close up, the likeness was even more striking. But it was more than just physical similarity. The image of Ann’s face was forever frozen in his mind as he had seen it that last terrible day at the airport. And now he was seeing it again – the head tilted questioningly just so, the brows gathered in concern – for him – just so. This was not some remarkable coincidence; this was not even Ann’s daughter or some other such soap opera explanation. Ann had been in his arms and his life and his bed for six months and in his mind ever since. He could not mistake her now.
“You are Ann Dubois,” he stated flatly.
She did not answer for a moment, and he thought that she might not have understood him. But then she shook her head, a sharp quick negation that he remembered all too well from their final terrible weeks.
“You have mistaken me for someone else, sir,” she said, and this time her accent was different, more guttural than the lilting French he had found so intriguing. “My name is Irina Cherenkov. I am from…”
He wiped her words from the air with an impatient sweep of his hand. “No!” he hissed. “No, I won’t have that. For thirty years I have dreamed of seeing you again. Don’t you understand, Ann? Losing you tainted everything else I have ever done in my life. Now, after all these years you can’t start by lying to me. You owe me that.”
She shook her head again and started to reply, but then she stopped. She stood motionless, watching him. Her glowing hair stirred in a gentle night breeze. He wished he could see her face better, read her eyes. Then her shoulders seemed to fall, as if setting down a weight.
“No, you’re right,” she said. “I do owe you better than that. I can’t lie to you again, John.”
He staggered with the impact. Seeing him so stricken, she stepped forward and put her hands on his shoulders. Before he knew what he was doing, he was crushing her body against his. He’d been afraid she would fade away like a dream, but her body was firm and real and soft in his arms. She did not resist. But it was only when he caught her scent that he really knew there could be no mistake.
“I’ve missed you so,” he whispered into her hair.
After a long moment she stirred and he released her. Tears were running down his cheeks, and he wiped them on his sleeve. She stood watching.
“I recognized you as soon as I saw you there in the audience,” she said, with no trace of an accent. “And I could see that you knew me. I knew you’d come after me; I remembered how you were.”
“Then why did you run?”
“Because I didn’t want this to happen. I didn’t want a confrontation where I’d be forced to lie to you.”
“Are you lying to me now?”
Again that quick shake of the head. “No. I should have. I should have brazened it out and pretended I didn’t know you, but I couldn’t. Not after what we had. You know I loved you very much, John.”
Her words cut into the heart of old wounds, and he replied angrily, “You could have fooled me. In fact, you did, didn’t you?”
She gave a small sad smile. “You’re just saying that because I hurt you. I loved you, and you know it, or you did then. You were young, but you were no fool. I couldn’t…”
“How can you be standing there, talking to me?” he demanded, cutting her off.
“Was that your wife beside you?”
“Yes. How can this be?” he repeated, refusing to be distracted.
“What are you going to say to her? How are you going to explain running away like this?”
“I’ll think of something. Answer me.”
She gave a deep sigh. “You were always so intense,” she said. Over her shoulder he saw June coming down the front steps of the hall. The crowd had cleared out by now, and she must have discovered that he wasn’t in the restroom. She looked both ways, then started toward their car.
Ann caught his glance. “Is that her? Is she looking for you?”
He nodded.
“Then go to her before she organizes a search party.”
“Not without an explanation. I have to know, I have to understand.”
“Not now. It’s too long a story. You have to go. Do you have a pen?” she asked.
He took out a pen and one of his business cards. She jotted something on the back of the card.
“This is my number. Call me; we can meet. I’ll tell you everything then.”
He clutched the card desperately. “When? Tonight?”
“No, not tonight. There’s a cast party.”
“Tomorrow then?”
“All right, tomorrow. Afternoon, not before. Now for God’s sake get out of here.”
“This isn’t a trick, is it? Are you running away again?”
“No. I’ll be there, I swear it. Now go.”
He turned and saw June standing beside their car. The door was open, the interior light on. She stood looking around in exasperation. He turned back to Ann, but she was already running across the grass, back toward the rear of the concert hall. He could just catch quick glimpses of white flickering between the trees. He hesitated a moment, tempted to not let her get out of his sight again. But then he turned and walked briskly toward his car. He was nearly there before June saw him.
“There you are!” she exclaimed and hurried to meet him. She was clearly more frightened than angry. “Where have you been? Where did you go?”
“Just walking. I suddenly became nauseous. I thought I was going to throw up, but I couldn’t. I felt hot and woozy. I decided I just needed some fresh air and just walked around on the lawn. Finally it passed.”
“Is it gone now? My God, you’re pouring with sweat. Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine.”
“What about your arms? Any tingling? Any chest pains?”
“No, I’m not having a heart attack.” He felt embarrassed by her solicitude. “Whatever it was seems to have passed. I guess I just needed some fresh air. Let’s go home.”
“I want you to call Doctor Weems tomorrow,” she said, getting into the car. “You’ve never had anything like that before.”
That night June wanted to make love but he demurred, saying he still felt light-headed. She fell asleep quickly, but he lay for hours with his hands behind his head, looking up at the ceiling and listening to her soft breathing. It was nearly dawn before he closed his eyes, rolled on his side, and fell asleep.
Saturday he woke exhausted after a night of disturbing dreams and had to convince himself that the encounter with Ann Dubois had not been another dream. June questioned him about last night’s illness, but he insisted he was fine and no doctor visit was called for. He spent the morning doing chores as usual, but so distracted that he had to return to the grocery twice for things he’d forgotten. All he could think about was Ann. How could she still look the same? What was she doing singing in a girls’ chorus in the same small town where he lived? Where had she been for the last thirty years?
At noon he went out on a trumped-up errand and called her from a pay phone in a shopping mall. The phone rang three times, then a girl’s voice answered – not Ann’s.
“Hello?”
“Hello. Is Ann there?”
“Who? No.” He heard her put her hand over the receiver and call to someone else. “It’s a wrong number.”
“No,” she said into the phone. “You must have a wrong number.”
“No, wait!” he said quickly, afraid she was about to hang up. “I meant Irina. Is she there?”
“What? Oh, yeah. Hey, Irina,” she called, rolling the “r” in a terrible attempt at a Russian accent. “It’s for you. It’s a man,” she added significantly, and he heard another girl giggle.
A moment later Ann’s voice was soft and warm in his ear. “Hello,” she said, with no question mark.
“I have to talk to you,” he said.
“Oh, yes,” she answered brightly. Her Russian accent was thicker, and he realized she was playing to her roommates. “Well, we could meet at that same place we talked before? Say at one o’clock? Would that be convenient?” He heard more stifled giggles in the background.
“At that same tree?” he asked, keeping his voice low and feeling very foolish at this stupid charade. He’d finally found her after all these years and they couldn’t even talk on the phone without sounding like Boris and Natasha.
“Yes. That would be fine,” she replied. “I’ll see you then.”
He wanted to ask her a thousand questions; he wanted to go to wherever she was and take her in his arms; he just wanted to hear her voice on the phone. But all he could think to say was, “Yes. All right. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye.” He could just hear someone starting to ask her a question, then the phone went dead. He went back to his car and drove over to the campus. It was only a few minutes away, and he would have a half-hour to kill. He couldn’t sit still. He got out and walked along the tree-shaded walks, thinking. The telephone call had been unsettling. He hadn’t imagined her living with roommates. Surely she would find their behavior sophomoric – and she would have to maintain that fake Russian accent all the time. But he had to concede she was very good at it, especially because he knew she actually had a French accent. Suddenly it occurred to him that he didn’t even know that she had any accent. Here she was spending a year, at least a term, in this college, pretending to be Russian. Maybe she had pretended to be French when she was with him.
He realized with a shock that he knew nothing about her for certain. She had told him she’d grown up in the south of France, with a French father and an American mother. Her mother died when Ann was twelve, and Ann became fascinated by her American roots. She had wanted to come to the States, but her father insisted she was too young. When she was sixteen she came to America alone and lived with an aunt somewhere on the East Coast to finish the last two years of high school. That was her story, and he’d never had any reason to doubt it. But now that he thought back, he didn’t remember her ever receiving a letter or call from anyone in all the time he had been with her. For all he knew, everything she had ever told him was a lie. For some reason this thought disturbed him more than anything else that had happened. He remembered lying in bed with her exchanging tales of their childhoods. He’d told her his brief, prosaic tale, then listened fascinated as she described the beautiful countryside of Provence and her grieving widower father. It had never occurred to him to doubt it, and it hurt him to think that she might have been inventing it all. And why? And he kept coming back to the same question again and again: how could she be here?
A few minutes before one he walked to the big tree. She wasn’t there, and he had a rush of panic. He tried to stay calm, but he suddenly felt it all slipping away, as in one of those awful dreams. What if she never showed up? How could he go on, never getting an explanation, never knowing if she had been real? How could he have let her out of his sight again? Then he saw her coming toward him across the grass and he could only stare.
She hadn’t seen him yet and he watched her striding along, swinging a white wicker picnic basket. She looked completely out of place, like something out of one of those BBC period dramas from the thirties. She wore a light cotton calf-length summer dress and a huge sun hat tilted rakishly to one side. His doubts returned with a rush. Was this all some bizarre charade, the girl only pretending to be Ann to mock him? But how could she know anything about him or Ann? How could it have been arranged, and for what conceivable purpose?
But then suddenly her exotic appearance seemed exactly right; it was just what his Ann would have done. In his gilded memories of their time together he had forgotten how often she’d embarrassed him with her flamboyant dress and behavior. She liked to dress in old out-of-fashion styles from various eras that would have seemed affected in anyone else. Now he recalled how at first it had put him off; he had taken it for mere attention mongering. But on coming to know her better, he’d come to realize that she simply did not care about what was currently stylish. She simply wore what she was in the mood for, and be damned to anyone who didn’t like it. Eventually he had accepted it, even learned to love her for it. Then too, she was the first European he had ever known. For all he knew at the time, perhaps all French women were like that. And why shouldn’t she be dramatic, even eccentric? After all, she was not only a performance major, but she also had a history minor and was very knowledgeable about the past. She had often surprised him by adopting some whimsical old tradition or archaic custom she’d read about somewhere. She was outrageous, but she got away with it because she exuded grace and confidence and because she was so extraordinarily beautiful.
She caught sight of him and her face broke into a smile. She waved brightly and his heart thumped with both excitement and anxiety. What would she think of him, what he had become? She walked up to him with a shy smile and gave him a quick kiss. He stood there looking at her, bursting with questions, but she immediately bent to her basket.
“Are you hungry?” she asked. “I hope you haven’t had lunch yet. I’m famished.” She took a red-and-white checked cloth from the basket and spread it under the tree. She sat down and looked up at him. He stood awkwardly, just gazing at her, not really believing; not really letting himself believe, even with her there beside him.
She patted the cloth beside her. “Come. Sit. I know you have a lot of questions, but you can ask them just as well while we eat. Look, I brought paté. Do you remember when I gave you that first taste?” She laughed. “You should have seen your face. I don’t think you knew what to expect.”
His mind whirled back, back to another picnic on another campus, when she had served him paté and caviar on little rounds of toast and he’d thought he’d died and gone to heaven. How could he have forgotten that picnic? And how could this young girl remember it? He sank to his knees as she pulled a bottle of wine from the basket. She handed it to him along with a delicate little antique corkscrew, then went back to withdrawing items from the basket. He started to open the wine, but then stopped and reached out and caught her hand. She looked up and met his eyes. They were Ann’s eyes.
“Once you were French,” he said. “Now you’re Russian. Once you were Ann. Now you’re Irina. Who are you really?”
“Please,” she said. “This is difficult for me. Let me do it my way. Will you do that? I will tell you if you will let me talk without interrupting.”
He searched her eyes, and finally released her hand.
“Open the wine,” she said.
He started on the cork, and as soon as his eyes were off hers, she began.
“I am neither French, nor Russian, nor Czech, nor any of the others I have used. Actually, I am Swiss. The name I was given at my birth was Anna Rosswein. I was born in Lucerne, on June the eighth.” She paused and reached into the basket to take out two linen napkins. She smoothed them out carefully, not looking up at him. Then she stopped, her face still turned away. “That was in the year fifteen twenty.”
His breath caught in his throat and he felt a tightness across his chest. It took all his strength to not interrupt. He peeled the foil from the bottle and began screwing in the corkscrew, letting her decide when to continue.
“I grew to adulthood like all the other girls,” she continued. “My family was loving and modestly comfortable. There was nothing unusual in my childhood, no reason to think I was in any way different. At the age of nineteen, I was married to Jan Kuchau, the son of a prominent merchant of the city. A year later, our first son Karl was born. We were very happy. There was no reason to believe that we would not have normal lives like any other couple. Everyone commented that the pregnancy and birth had not affected my beauty at all. The other young wives were jealous and teased me at first. Jan and I laughed with them, but of course we were pleased. A year later, our second son was born. Again I was the envy of my girlfriends. It was flattering at first, a source of pleasant surprise to me. But as the years passed, I continued to look twenty. At first Jan was so proud of me. ‘Look at my Anna,’ he would say. ‘She still looks the same as the day I married her.’ But it changed. It changed from being a cause of congratulations, to an oddity, and at last to something darker.” She sighed. “I think it was when Jan turned forty. He seemed to become almost afraid of me. Strangers sometimes asked if I was his daughter. My friends began to avoid me. I knew they resented me. Jan took to drinking; he grew fat. He became morose; he taunted me about how I looked. He accused me of using some artifice, then of black magic, of denying my aging. But it was nothing I had done. I had simply stopped aging. I had no idea why it happened. I still don’t.”
She set out a plate of little scones and jam, still not meeting his eyes. The wine bottle was forgotten in his hands.
“As our boys grew, they were teased about me. I embarrassed them. Once when Karl was perhaps sixteen, an old woman on the street took the two of us for lovers and tried to sell us an aphrodisiac. He was humiliated and furious. In his anger he turned on me, blaming me somehow for not looking like his friends’ mothers. The scenes got worse. Jan was constantly angry with me. I think he was really angry that he was getting old and I wasn’t, but he turned all his resentment against me, as if it were my fault. In the end he even turned the boys against me. By then none of our old friends would visit. I had lost all desire for my husband. He had rejected me, and he was gross and abusive. He was becoming a bitter old drunk. I was miserable and alone, and I came to curse how I looked.
“But even then I did not want to grow old. I just wanted to be accepted for what I was. I didn’t just look young; I felt young. I still felt twenty years old, and I began to notice the twenty-year-old boys. They certainly noticed me. They were full of fun and laughter and youthful enthusiasm, the way Jan and I had once been. He accused me of having affairs with these boys, but I wasn’t. I enjoyed their company; they made me feel normal, as I never could at home. Then one night Jan got drunk and we had a terrible row. I could not reason with him. He beat me, calling me a witch, and worse. The boys were both gone by then, off on their own. They’d made it clear they were not comfortable when I was around. And I realized that there was no point in staying any longer. When Jan fell asleep, I took enough money to keep me for a few months, and I took a coach to Italy. I applied for a position as governess to a wealthy widower in Florence, and soon I was living in his townhouse close by the university there. He thought I was twenty. Actually, I was fifty-seven.”
She stopped and they both sat motionless. After a moment she drew two glasses from the basket and held them out. He filled them, but he noticed the bottle was shaking slightly. Or was it the glasses shaking?
“It was the beginning of a new life for me. As governess, I attended concerts and poetry readings at the university with my wards. I found myself awakened, my world enlarged. I had been a simple country girl, an ordinary Swiss hausfrau. Now I found I had a good mind, and there was so much to learn. I read everything I could get my hands on. Soon I was making many new friends among the students at the university, people who felt as I did. I decided I liked the excitement and the intellectual stimulation of the university community. There was art and music and lectures on every imaginable subject. The students were so alive, so vibrant, so…”
“So young,” he ventured.
“Yes. Like me. Of course in those days I could not be a student because I was a woman. But I met an ardent young poet and he asked me to live with him. He called me his Musette, his little muse. I stayed with him and came to know his friends and for the first time felt accepted for myself. You can’t imagine how exhilarating it was for me, after being treated as a freak for so many years. Oh, the discussions we had, from religion to politics to natural philosophy. I loved my new life. I learned things I never would have heard of in my old home. When the poet graduated and moved away, I stayed on, and soon there was another, a painter this time. And so it began. I have stayed near schools ever since. It is perfect for me. The young men come for a few years, then they are gone. If I find a place I like, I stay five or ten years, then move on before anyone notices that I still look the same. I never tire of learning. It was heaven to me when the universities began to admit women. I could finally attend the classes myself, and not just learn from the other students.”
“What did you study?”
“The arts, science, mathematics. And I loved languages. I knew German and French since birth, and I had already learned Italian in Florence. I taught myself Latin and Spanish. Then I fell in love with a young writer from England who was studying in Genoa, where I was living at that time. I thought English was so exotic and romantic. I loved how it sounded. In a few months, we were speaking only English to each other. He introduced me to all the wonderful English literature. Marlowe and the Bede, and Chaucer of course. I adore Chaucer.”
“Shakespeare, I assume?”
“No, this was a little before his time.”
He felt his mind trying to adjust to that, and couldn’t manage it. She saw his dazed look and took pity on him.
“I loved him later of course. Well, to tell the truth I thought some of the comedies shallow, but what sonnets! A toast?” she asked, raising her glass.
“To youth?”
“To memories,” she smiled, and they touched glasses and drank.
She handed him a scone and he nibbled at it with little appetite. He felt battered by a stream of questions flowing through him, too fast to grasp.
“And is that what you have done with your immortality?” he asked. “You’ve gone to college for five centuries?”
She laughed. “That is not all I have done, no, but it provides a useful cover. The temporary community of a university is convenient for my needs. But every few years I must move on. I choose my next city and I study it, study the history and language and culture. I learn enough so that I can live there unobtrusively. People know I’m not a native, but my accent is so mixed up now that no one can place it. I’m always the foreigner who speaks almost as well as a native. It is good for me, because it excuses the little mistakes I make, the customs or the idiom I didn’t know.”
“So you just throw up your life and start over in a new city? That must be hard.”
“It is hard, but what else can I do? It is the price I pay for my longevity. And each time it is more difficult to choose my next destination because I cannot go back to a place I have already lived, not until everyone I knew there is gone. So I must constantly go to a new place. This served very well in previous centuries, but now with instant communication and high-speed travel, it is much more difficult. Our meeting is a perfect example of the problem. I have never been back to Ohio, of course, but how could I know that you had moved to this same small town? I don’t know how much longer I can go on without being detected.”
“But isn’t it all terribly strange to you? Here you are, a sixteenth century woman in the midst of space travel and the Internet and frozen turkey dinners. Isn’t it disorienting?”
She laughed. “Less than it is for you, I suspect. You were born in the middle of the century and had to learn all about the modern world and its history in a decade or two. I have been a citizen of the twentieth century twice as long as you have. You are the newcomer here, not me. I am perfectly at home in this age, just as I was in those that went before. I believe I enjoy a unique perspective on the great currents of history. And what a flow it is: the progression of events and discoveries; the cycles of taste and fashion; the rise and fall of empires. It is a fascinating parade, and one I never tire of watching.”
He could only shake his head in wonder. It was such an incongruous thing to hear from this young woman, little more than a child. She saw his involuntary reaction, and knew he needed time to absorb all this. She fixed herself another scone and ate it.
“So for all this time,” he asked, “all these years, you have always been twenty years old? Doesn’t it – pall after a while?”
She shook her head with a smile. “You would think so, wouldn’t you? But oddly enough it never does. Part of me is old, has seen it all a hundred times before. But it is never the same. Being twenty in 1998 is nothing like being twenty in 1898, or 1798. It is always new. And I still have the interests and emotions of a twenty-year-old. I still love fun and excitement and meeting new people. People are always new, every single one I’ve ever met.” She flashed him a sly smile. “And I still have the hormones and desires of a twenty-year-old. You can’t have completely forgotten what that is like. You certainly understood it once.”
He had to laugh. “To tell you the truth, it almost makes me tired to think of it,” he admitted. “And what about love? Do you never tire of an endless succession of ardent young student princes in your bed?”
“That is the hardest part. After Jan I knew I could never marry or have children again. Most of the time it is as you say, a simple liaison. I have my appetites, my needs, like any other woman. But I am not a harlot. I am with one man at a time. If I have had many lovers, it is because of my unique situation, not because of any promiscuous nature. Sometimes it is enough. But, like any other woman, I long for more. I have had great freedom, wonderful experiences, but it has a cost. I know it can never last. Even my happiest moments are always tinged by the knowledge that soon I will have to inflict pain, that I will have to leave.”
“And yet you do it again and again. You leave a trail of broken hearts behind you.”
Her eyes flashed. “Do you think I am a stone? Do you think I do not love, not hurt? I have spent more nights in tears than you have been alive. But what choice do I have? If I don’t leave them, they will eventually leave me.”
“Do you think there are no faithful men?”
“It has nothing to do with fidelity,” she replied with a sad smile. “I’m not talking about morality, but mortality. Like anyone else, I want to be loved for the rest of my life. But no man can give me that. They will all die and leave me alone.”
“And that has been your life? Hundreds of brief doomed love affairs?”
“You make it sound like that is all I do. I work, I study, I learn, I travel. I make friends. My life is very full. But it is lonely. I meet a man I like, we are attracted to each other; we have an affair. What is wrong with that? But over the years I have learned a great deal about human nature and human relationships. A man, no matter how much he loves me, does not want to hear that his lover is five hundred years old. He would think me mad, or a liar. And if he did believe me, he would soon fly from me in fear. I long ago learned it is best to concoct an unverifiable past and keep my secret to myself.”
“But if you never tell them the truth about yourself then you can’t stay with anyone more than a year or two. Have you never had a longer relationship?”
“Just once. I met a man in Muscovy, a wonderful man named Arkady. This must have been 1780 or so. He was very charming, and we became lovers. Then, through a remarkable coincidence – his mother visited from Prague and it turned out that we had known each other forty years before – he found out about me and I could not deny it. He told me he didn’t care. He begged me to stay with him. It sounded so good, to be with someone I didn’t have to lie to, didn’t have to leave. So I did.”
“And did it work out?”
“I stayed with him for thirty-five years. He was wonderful. We moved six times, so people wouldn’t notice about me. He never stopped loving me, and he never became jealous of my youth. Can you imagine what that was like for him? To feel himself aging, drawing him further and further from me, and me never changing, year after year? He was a rare man and I loved him very much. I still think of him as my only real husband.”
“What happened?”
“What do you think happened? That we lived happily ever after? He got old and he died, and I didn’t. I loved a man for most of a lifetime, and then he was taken away and I had to go on alone.” She drained her glass and looked down at her hands. “And the hell of it is that in this world, that is a happy ending. That’s as happy as endings ever get. You get old and sick and weak and die and leave someone crying.” She sat with bent head, her face drawn with sorrow. Finally she looked up at him with tears in her eyes. Tears, and anger.
“So many people have longed for immortality,” she said bitterly. “I hear people bleat about it all the time, and I want to scream at them that it’s not as wonderful as they imagine. No one ever thinks it through. Whole centuries come and go, with all their passions and wars and causes and heroes and great movements. I am swept up in it, too. I am a part of it; they are my causes as well. Then the world turns, and those times and people fade and pass and are forgotten. I feel like the only survivor of some immense battle, gazing around at all my slain comrades. I know you must think I have some incredible good fortune, this wonderful gift of eternal youth. But think about it, John. Every person I have ever loved in my whole life is dead. Thousands of them! Every single one dead.”
“No,” he said. “Not all.”
She gazed at him sadly. “No, you’re right” she said more quietly. “Not quite all.”
They were quiet then, thinking. Eventually she broke the silence.
“Are you angry with me?”
“What? No, of course not.”
“Disappointed then?” she asked, then caught his expression. “Ah, that is it, isn’t it? You thought we had the one great love in the world, and now you find that you were only one in a long, long line.”
“No, that’s not it. Well, perhaps it is part of it. But it’s more than that. I knew you were no virgin. I knew you were much more experienced than I was. Frankly, that was part of your appeal for me. You seemed sophisticated, worldly.”
“You just had no idea how worldly,” she laughed, popping a scone and jam in her mouth, her characteristic humor restored.
He smiled, but it quickly faded. “No, what bothers me,” he said, “is that you lied to me. All those stories about growing up in Provence. It was all a pack of lies, wasn’t it?”
“In a way it was true. It was the real childhood of a woman I knew very well in Paris some years ago. But, no, it was not mine. I am forced to collect other people’s childhoods, you see. I can’t use my own; the world I grew up in no longer exists. I’m sorry for lying to you, but there was no other way. You must see, don’t you, that I can’t go around telling people that I’m five hundred years old? Even people I love and that care about me? If I’d told you, you would have thought I was mad. Who wouldn’t? Worse yet, if people did find out about me, my life could be destroyed.”
“They don’t burn witches any more, Ann.”
“People still hate what they don’t understand. And they still want to stay young and live forever. If they didn’t burn me, they might put me in a laboratory and study me like a specimen. I don’t want to be studied, thank you.”
“What do you want?”
She smoothed the napkin across her lap.
“What everyone wants, I suppose. To go on living, to be happy, to love and be loved.”
“Do you feel you are loved now?”
“I don’t have anyone at the moment, no.”
“But soon you will find another college boy and be on your way again. Is that enough for you – one more sophomore to add to the list? You know so much more than these children, you’ve done so much more; you are so much more. Don’t you need more?”
She shrugged, but did not reply directly. “I look twenty, I feel twenty; people expect me to act twenty. How else am I to act? Do you expect me to act my age? If I did I would have to crawl under the ground. Of course I am with younger men. They’re all younger men. Do not belittle them too much, John. You were once like them. And just because they are young, don’t think they cannot love me. I have been loved, more than most women. I was loved by you, I know.”
“You said you wanted to love and be loved. Many men could love you. But who is there for you to love?”
She looked at him seriously. “I love you, John. I’ve loved you ever since that first time.”
He was silent. He looked away at the trees, at a couple walking down a path. He blinked the sun from his eyes.
“I’ll bet you say that to all the boys,” he said with a bitter smile, though his voice cracked on the last word.
“Please don’t hate me, John. Don’t hate me for what I am forced to be. Don’t you see? That’s why I had to lie. That’s why I had to keep so much of myself back. The more I let myself love you, the more I knew I would hurt you in the end. Because I would have to leave you, and you would hate me for leaving, as if I’m some heartless bitch who enjoys hurting people. I didn’t get on that plane to be cruel; I did it so you wouldn’t come to hate me. I couldn’t stand that. Even if I had told you the truth back then, I would still have had to leave you. Don’t you see?”
“No, I don’t see that,” he snapped. “I don’t. Now finally I do know what you really are. It’s amazing, it’s hard to believe, but the fact that you are sitting here telling me about it proves that it’s true. I know your terrible secret, and I’m not tying you to a stake or calling the cops. I still love you, Ann.”
She took hold of his hand, forced him to look at her.
“Do you, John? Sure, you look at me and remember what it was like thirty years ago. You want to go back to those times, to be young and in love again. Who wouldn’t? But you can’t. You can’t be twenty again, not ever. And I can never be fifty. We’re still worlds apart, just as if we were on separate planets.”
“But we’re not. We’re both sitting here on this same blanket, drinking the same wine. We could be together again. We are together again. Thirty years isn’t that unusual an age difference.”
“Thirty years?” she laughed. “This is not just another May-December relationship, John. This is a January-Pleistocene relationship. You seem to think you’re thirty years older than I am, but you’re not. I’m five centuries older than you are. You’re not hitting on a young girl here. I’m the oldest woman in the world.”
“I don’t care if you’re Methuselah’s grandmother, Ann… or whatever your name is.”
“Ann is fine. I’ve gone by Ann a lot.”
“But don’t you see? I may be thirty years older and I’ve put on some weight, but I still feel the same way I did in 1967. I loved you then, and I love you now. I’ve always loved you, Ann. I always will.”
She looked at him sadly. “This is exactly why I never tell anyone. Don’t you think I’m tempted? When we were lying in bed in that wonderful farm house and you were telling me about growing up in Ohio, don’t you think I wanted to tell you about Switzerland in the sixteenth century?” She began to get angry now. “Do you think I like to lie? Do you think I enjoy it? Oh, the crap I put up with, and no one knows anything about it. Every time someone tells me some crap about the causes of the Napoleonic War or what life was like in Renaissance Italy, don’t you think I want to tell them they’re full of shit? When some sweaty drunk gives me a line and thinks he’s so fucking clever, don’t you know I bite my tongue to stop from telling him I heard that one two hundred years ago? I’m tired of being different, damn it. I’ve been different for too damn long. I’m tired of biting my tongue, and never being myself, and never saying what I really think. I’m tired of leaving people, God damn it. I’m the all-time world-record queen of leaving people I love.”
“You wouldn’t have to leave me, Ann.”
“You’re married, John. Have you forgotten?”
“It hasn’t been a real marriage for years, since long before the kids grew up and moved away. We don’t even sleep together any more.”
“Don’t you love her?”
“I don’t even know. I did once, but now it’s more a matter of inertia. We’ve been together a long time. We know each other’s ways. It’s easier to stay together than to have the unpleasantness of a divorce.”
“Does she feel the same way?”
“I think so. She might resist a divorce at first, but I think it would be more out of pride than any sense of lost love. She would agree eventually. There’s no romance left.”
“What happened to it?”
“Who knows? So many things happen. People change. But at the root of it, I think she always felt I was holding something back, never really giving myself to her completely. She often suspected me of having another woman.”
“Did you?”
“Only one.”
“What happened to her?”
“She left me to go home to Provence.”
“Oh, John,” she sighed, touching his arm. “Is that really it? Please don’t put that on me. Don’t tell me I ruined your marriage.”
“No, I can’t say that, really. But after you left I just went adrift. I knew what real love was, you see. You taught me that. And when you were gone I couldn’t settle for anything less.”
“Oh, John,” she said again. “I’m so sorry I hurt you so. I felt that I had to leave, for your sake. I was not what you thought I was. I had to take my terrible secret and get out of your life. I did it for you.”
He sat looking at her, shaking his head. He felt a lightness, almost a vertigo. He was in a plummeting elevator, plunging through all those years he could have spent with Ann; years that seemed now to have been lived in vain. All he could feel was a bone-deep sadness, a sense of irredeemable loss he hadn’t felt this intensely for thirty years. His throat was too tight to speak.
“What a waste,” was all he could croak out. “What a terrible fucking waste.”
“I’m so sorry,” she murmured, putting her hand on his. Suddenly he remembered that touch, not in his mind, but in his hand itself. He remembered her touching him just that way, that last day at the airport. He’d felt that touch that whole long nightmare drive back to the house; burning like a brand on the back of his hand. He hadn’t thought of that since that night. And then the empty house, the empty bed, the empty life. He couldn’t take it. He’d moved out two days later to get away from the emptiness. Since then he’d been married twice and raised a family, but the emptiness had never been filled.
“Stay with me now,” he whispered.
“You mean the night?”
“I mean the rest of our lives – well, my life, I suppose. Come back to me, Ann. That’s all I ever wanted, all this time. I didn’t want to own you or change you. I just wanted to be with you.”
“I know,” she said, meeting his eyes directly now. “That’s why it was hard for me. You were so undemanding. You accepted me as I was, with all my eccentricities. When I was with you, I felt bathed in your love, like a warm bath.”
“The bathtub may be a bit old and rusty, Ann, but it’s as full and warm as ever.”
“Oh, please,” she laughed. “What an awful metaphor.”
“Is it at all appealing to you, Ann? I know you’re young and beautiful and could have any young stud you wanted, but don’t I offer something more? With me you would have no secrets; you would have a friend and an ally to help negotiate your dangerous world, at least for a few years.”
“Oh, John, you don’t know what it’s like. You might be happy for a while, but it wouldn’t last.”
“Nothing lasts, Ann. You above all should know that. No relationship can go on forever, but people still put themselves through the emotional wringer for the pleasure and comfort that they bring. Temporary joy is better than none at all. Isn’t that what you’ve been doing all these years – taking your joys where you find them? That’s what I’m offering you, Ann: a few years of love, of relief from the loneliness.”
“Don’t you think you could be just trying to recapture your youth?”
“Of course I am. That’s exactly what I’m trying to do. I want to recapture those wonderful feelings we had back in the farmhouse.”
“What about your friends, your family? They’d think you’d lost your mind, running off with a twenty-year-old girl.”
“Let them think what they like. None of that matters. It would probably be best if we left the area anyway. We could start over, like you’ve done a hundred times before, but this time you wouldn’t be alone. Ann, Ann, what do you say?”
She searched his eyes thoughtfully. They still held hands, their fingers comfortably entwined.
“Your offer is very enticing, John. It would be wonderful to not always feel so alone. But I don’t know, I don’t know. This is not easy for me, John. The young men are so often shallow, or so full of themselves they have nothing left for me. I need something more than enthusiasm and high spirits. I may look twenty years old, but I’m a grown woman, John. I need adult relationships.”
“You need an older man.”
“I’ve been with older men. They’re either infatuated with the idea of a young girl, or they’re condescending and paternalistic. I won’t be treated like a child, not by anyone.” She sighed. “You don’t know what’s it’s been like for me.”
“You’ll have years to tell me all about it.”
She gazed at him solemnly. “How I’ve missed you,” she whispered, and leaned into his arms.
“Then you’ll do it?” he said into her hair.
“This is a big decision, John, for both of us. We can’t just sit here on this blanket and say, ‘Okay, let’s do it.’”
“Why not? I can. Let’s do it.”
“I can’t, not like this. This is a new idea for me. I’ll have to think about it.”
“How long?”
“Ever the impetuous one. Look, I don’t know.”
“All right, how about this? I’ll come back here tomorrow, to this same tree, at noon. If you’re here, we’ll go on from there. If you’re not, then I’ll know your decision, and I won’t bother you again. There will be no farewell scene. There’ll be no pleading, no tears. It has to be your choice. But I won’t be toyed with, not again. It must be all or nothing this time. Will you agree to that?”
She didn’t answer for so long that he wondered if she were going to. He could feel her tears wet on his neck. Finally he felt her nod.
“Yes,” she whispered. “I’ll agree to that.”
Although he still didn’t have her answer, he felt a tension break in him, like a rope that had been twisted around his chest for years. And he realized what it was: he’d finally said what he should have said thirty years ago, what he’d wanted to say all this time. He gave her a long tight hug and breathed in her scent one more time. Then he stood up and walked away, forcing himself to walk all the way back to his car without once turning to look back.
copyright 1999 by Brian K. Crawford