The Handsome Man, page 10
“Hi,” she says.
“Hey. Nice to see you.”
“Yeah, same. I’m glad you came.”
“Of course. Sorry to surprise you like that last night, maybe I should have just left.”
“No, I’m glad you came after me finally.”
“How have you been?”
“Well, not great I guess. I thought about you,” she says. There’s a sound in the distance like a low hum, streaks of cloud in the sky. “I don’t have much time. I wanted to tell you something. I should have told you before. I could have called you. I didn’t know if I could,” she says, and she tells me that after we met, soon after, she’d checked herself into the psych ward at the hospital. She didn’t speak for two weeks, the entire time she was there. Something was wrong with her and she didn’t know what it was and she needed to face it. “It had nothing to do with you. You jumped into my life at a bad moment.”
Oh, I say. Are you okay? I’m better. Do you want to talk about it? Not really. What do you want to talk about? Nothing. Let’s just sit.
We sit there silent. She puts her head on my shoulder. I think she’s asleep and she says, “You should know too, I liked you. I wanted to see you again. But you were sweet and I thought: I’ll hurt this one. I’ll run away and I’ll hurt him and then I’ll hurt too. And I’m married now. I got married. I think I still like you. Do you feel that? I know it was only one night but it felt real, it felt like a lifetime, didn’t it? When I got out of the hospital I met someone. His name is Robert and he’s really nice to me. He’s patient and he treats me better than anyone has ever treated me. We got married a couple months ago. I’m sorry.”
“Oh,” I say. “You’re here now though.”
“I am.”
“So. Okay. Can we do this again another time?”
“Of course.”
“Then okay,” I say.
“You’re not upset?”
“You’re happy, right?”
“Yeah, I am. I love Robert, he’s always there for me.”
“Then great,” I say. We talk some more and we’re quiet some more and I ask do you still live here? and she says where? and I say in this building and she says, “What? I don’t live here, no.” I ask who does? and she says, “I don’t know, who cares?” and we watch the sun go down, all of the strangers below us living their lives, all of us together. I meet Robert a few months later, Nico coming into my life every few months, every few years, not so much anymore and Robert kisses me on both cheeks because he’s Italian too and it’s nice, a heat like Italian kindness and it’s nice to have a friend who you love, who you want to be married to, who you’d marry their husband too if she asked, all of us married together someday maybe.
* * *
The bus brings me to Munich where I get on another bus that brings me to Florence where I get on a train to Rome, so many hours of moving, the country passing by me in darkness and in sleep. When the sun is out the morning Italian countryside opens from the window of the train like the curtains of a stage play. So much ruin, stone buildings, broken houses, dead autumn trees, muddy ground, brown muddy water. I’m going 242 km/h through the middle of a mountain and the man across from me is listening to an audio book, I can hear it, something pulp, something beautiful and it’s golden and I breathe differently here, the sunlight sharp, crystalline.
No one robs me at Termini. Nico is there waiting. She looks different from the last time I saw her, her round and full moon face has sharpened, she’s stronger and composed of the same stuff a star is composed of, not the star in the sky but the star on the movie screen legs crossed and cool, so cool. “How are you, darling?” she says as she takes off her sunglasses so large they hide her face and she kisses my cheek, we take the subway to her home next to the great pyramid overlooking the Protestant Cemetery.
“I almost died,” she says, as she prepares a plate of bread and tomatoes, cheese and prosciutto. “Would you like Merlot or Montepulciano?”
She lights a cigarette at the window and we see her neighbour, an old woman across the street, changing her clothes and she’s naked in front of us and neither of us mentions it. Nico says, “Italy is so strange, everything happens in the open. You might not see it the same way. I think you see things differently than I do. To me everything is beautiful like it’s made of gold and garlanded. It’s like a soap opera brothel.” She tells me about her job teaching English to Italian teenagers, how they hit on her every day, “It’s really charming,” she says, a long drag of her long cigarette, and she brings up her heart attack. I take out my audio recorder and I ask, “Do you mind if I record this conversation?” and she says, “Yeah, that’s fine. What for?” and I say I don’t know, I just feel it’s important to take down, maybe I’ll write something about all this someday if you’re okay with that and she says, “Yeah, that would be fine I suppose.”
There’s a click and a shuffling, a little silence.
“Okay, it’s on.”
“Okay.”
“So what happened. You had a heart attack?”
“Kind of. I oversimplified it for a lot of people because it’s easier that way. It’s something people can understand. What happened is I had several massive blood clots and my lung collapsed. I had what’s called a pulmonary embolism. I was in some real danger for a time. I had to be hooked up to a breathing machine.”
“But wait, go back a little. When did this happen?”
“It was in the winter. I remember because we’d just signed the lease on our house and had just moved in. Poor Robert had to paint all the inside of the house by himself because I was laid out in a sickbed. You remember Robert, my husband?”
“Yeah. How is he?”
“He’s fine. He doesn’t like that I’m here but we’re still married. We still love each other of course. I miss him. He’s very patient with me. But sorry, what happened is I started experiencing a little bit of pain in my leg as if it was the only part of my body that I’d worked out. Also later here in my chest. It was very mild. I almost didn’t think much of it but I happened to mention it to the pharmacist when…what I had done... I’ll be honest. Don’t use this if you write something about this okay?”
“Of course.”
“Well, I’d gone to the pharmacy to dispose of a set of pills that I’d been stockpiling in the event of a suicide attempt. I was like, I’ve got my shit together. I’ve got to be serious about this living thing. But I’m struggling with those ideas again now. I feel like it should be simpler because I’ve been given this new lease on life and I feel like I have the responsibility to make the most of it but… Do you want some more wine?”
“Sure, yeah. Thank you.”
“So I disposed of those pills. While I was there I said to the pharmacist, ‘Hey, I’m experiencing this pain in my chest and had a little bit in my leg, did I do something?’ She took my blood pressure and she suggested that I go to the emergency room. It was initially misdiagnosed as a musculoskeletal problem but later that night I experienced difficulty walking and sleeping and breathing and it was as though this whole side of my body had shut down. Robert took me to emergency in the morning. He stayed up all night, I wouldn’t leave the house. I wouldn’t let him take me anywhere. I was being so stubborn. It wasn’t until he had to go to work and I realized I’d be in this big house where I felt so alone without him, like an intruder. It was then that I let him drive me there.”
“Ha! Good for him.”
“Yeah. Well, I ended up in hospital for twelve days. At first I had a quite serious breathing regimen. I had a giant oxygen bypass machine because one of my lungs wasn’t willing to behave like a lung. Then slowly I was put on less and less oxygen as my lung came back to itself. I started to breathe normally but I still thought I was going to die.”
“How do you feel now?”
“Well…you go through something like that and it knocks you for a loop. I sort of have… I feel shame… Sometimes I brush up against existential angst. Lately there’s been a whole shit ton of that. And I feel guilty that my will to live was shaken by this sort of physical, medical catastrophe because if I’m serious about my shit it ought to be unshakable. But it shook me hard…”
“We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
“No, I want to. This is good, keep asking me questions.”
“Okay, what was it like being in the hospital?”
“Oh it was so repetitious. Any time a doctor came to see me was like a jolt of anticipation. Like, what are they going to tell me now? Am I going to learn something that’s going to get me out of here quicker? I also had so many visitors, which was so kind of people. You learn that people care. That’s one of the reasons I’m trying hard not to give up now. There’s a part of me that wants to start stockpiling medication again. Also I’m now on blood thinners for the rest of my life. If I take too many of those I’d start bleeding internally and then I’d really be in for it. I would have to face the consequences of that action. There’s definitely part of me that wants to do something drastic because I don’t know what I’m doing with my life now and I don’t know what I want to be doing and I’ve been sliding into despair. Like, what am I doing? Why did I leave my husband and everything I knew to come here?”
“I guess that’s something you’ll figure out eventually.”
“Yeah…I know how many people I would be letting down to go down that path without being prompted. The pulmonary embolism was something I didn’t choose. Choosing to kill myself would be a betrayal of these people who love me. Whether it makes ultimate sense or not, whether I’ve lived a life that merits that kind of goodwill, I feel like I have the responsibility to honour people’s love. Especially if I’m going to be at all consistent in my view regarding the primacy of love in general because I really do want to live that way. Like, I promised someone I’d be around. I have to be around for him.”
We should go to dinner, she says, I’ll show you how the Romans live.
Rome is warm and there are ruins everywhere, Nico walks me through her street, through the courtyards, couples kissing, couples eating gelato old men in sweat-stained suits. We walk into a wine store and there are tables inside, people eating entire meals, dogs sitting under their tables, all of them yelling sì sì! grazie! and I hear Nico on the other side of the store and she’s yelling in Italian at an old man behind a counter who is eating a breadstick big as a finger on his hand, his hand like a loaf of bread, and I stand behind her and she gives him money and we leave and I ask her are you okay? What was that? She says, “What?” I say you were yelling at that guy and she says, “Oh we were just talking.” We walk along a river. The sun is going down now, we’re at the Colisseum and she opens our bottle of wine and she passes it to me and she says, “This is a touristy thing. Whatever, it’s neat right? People used to watch other people die here every day. It was entertainment.”
We go to a bar and Nico orders us drinks and there’s a great feast in the room like a buffet all couscous, bread, pasta, and salads. We eat and we drink and when she’s in the bathroom I notice a man at the table across from us and he says, “I heard you speaking English.”
“I was, yes.”
“Where are you from?”
I hesitate, I think of what Nico told me about Termini, to be careful here. To keep up my guard. I tell him North America.
“Nice,” he says, and he stares at me and a moment passes and I ask where he’s from. “I’m from Colombia,” he says, “I’m a magician, can I show you a magic trick?”
“No, thank you.”
“What about your friend, can I ask her?”
“You can ask her if you like, I don’t think she’ll be into it either.”
When Nico comes back the man asks her, “Do you want to see a magic trick?” and she says, “Oh my god, yes! Of course!” and her eyes light up. The Colombian shows us his trick and then he asks for money and we both say no, sorry, and he goes back to his table and he doesn’t look at us and later Nico says, “I liked his trick, didn’t you?” I laugh and I say no, I don’t need card tricks and she says, “I never knew you weren’t fun,” the reflection of the moon in her hair, a woman somewhere nearby singing what sounds like “Wild Horses” by the Rolling Stones, a song from another place entirely, another era, in a thick, luxurious Italian accent like a hand gliding against the grain of a velvet bedsheet. Then I’m asleep on her couch and I dream of Nico still, we’re still walking through Rome in the night but then she changes and she’s Jana now and she holds a bullfrog in the small palm of her small hand and says look and I look into its eyes, the eyes of the frog like human eyes like the eyes of her and I’m startled awake and it’s the dim part of the pre-morning and Nico is moving silent through the room, she’s here and she turns to me and I’m awake and she’s smiling at me, good morning, something calm washes over, all the colours of the world inside of me I’ll never forget it. She says she has to leave.
I walk through Rome. I walk to the museum of John Keats, I read the letters of John Keats, I stand in the room where John Keats died, I stare into his death mask faded yellow. Outside tourists line the Spanish Steps, the entire Piazza photographed twenty times per second where once it was empty, once a man wrote here and this is where he died. I eat pizza, I drink wine, everywhere people yelling and laughing sì! sì! buono grazie! When Nico finds me in her home I’m reading Keats’s “Ode to a Grecian Urn” and she tells me she can’t stay, she has to go back to work. We drink a glass of wine and she tells me about her day and it’s like laying your heavy naked body in the flowing Trevi Fountain just hearing her speak. She leaves and I get a message from Jana that says:
hey! where did you go? I just went out to get some coffee for us and you were gone
and another one that reads:
sorry you left, I hope you’re okay. Let’s hang out again soon?
and they’re dated from three days ago. I write her back and I say:
hey, sorry I’m in Rome. my phone has been dead. I might come back in a couple days, will you be there? I’d like to see you again
* * *
The next day is my last day in Rome. I’m restless. Nico is at work and I’m in her apartment and it’s raining outside and I’m reading and I’m on my computer and I want to be moving, I’m stuck. When Nico gets home she has to leave again for a dinner with her boss, “It’s a gala,” she says, “I’m sorry I haven’t had much time for you,” she says and it’s okay, I say, you’re alive and that’s what I wanted and she changes into a long black dress and she’s more beautiful than I’ve ever seen her, she’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, or maybe it’s more that something lingers from when someone else loved me and it withers inside, the erosion of stone from simple time, and anyway Nico and I are here, my time with Nico, not all these moments that come are gone too fast I suppose. She asks me, “How do I look?” and I say, “You look great,” and I want to say you’re the most beautiful woman in the world and I want to mean it and I hesitate, it’s the best I can do with Robert back at home, lovely Robert so lovely he never hurt me either and I love him too. I say, “Hey, I haven’t heard you play piano this whole time I’ve been here,” and she says yeah, I don’t do that anymore, I’m a different person now, different from before and, “Anyway,” she says, “by the way, I promised you I’d stick around too.” She leaves and I book a ticket back to Berlin and in the morning I say goodbye to Nico.
I say goodbye to Nico and I fly back to Berlin.
* * *
I get a message from Jana when I get to Berlin, it says:
I brought Amir to Munich for the next few days, we’re visiting friends. come to Munich. Come see me
and I’m out of money and I’m almost out of credit and I’ll make it back to Canada with a few dollars left. I can’t go to Munich. I won’t see Jana again.
I have a few days left and I meet a woman in a café and she talks to me and she talks a lot about herself but I don’t mind, I’m alone in a place that might as well be the middle of the ocean so far away from land. She asks me if I want to go to a dinner party and I say yes. She brings me to some Turkish markets and she speaks to the vendors in Turkish and they laugh and it’s so charming and she takes me by the arm and it’s like we’re a couple now, we’re walking arm in arm our steps matching perfect as we walk through Kreuzberg our hands full of food and we get to her friend’s apartment through the dark halls, the lights don’t work, the switches don’t turn and we find their apartment giggling in the dark and they welcome us hello. And it’s nice, they’re kind, they welcome me and we speak, I act like the charming guest asking questions, where are you from, what do you do, this is a beautiful wine, isn’t it? A woman comes in late and she sits next to me at the great meal we’re all sharing and she’s drunk and she looks at me, up and down, and not looking at me now she asks everyone else, “Who’s this guy?” and no one answers her and I say hello as she turns her head and talks to someone else. They all get drunker and they all speak in Turkish and I can’t understand what’s being said, I haven’t said anything in a long time and the woman I came with isn’t here now, where is she? What was her name again? I can’t remember now. The woman next to me asks, “Why are you so quiet?” and she laughs and she pours wine for everyone but me. A man who was kind to me earlier in the night looks at me and says something serious in Turkish and everyone is quiet now and every face is aimed at me. Someone asks, “Are you okay? Are we making you uncomfortable?” I say no, I’m happy to have been invited and the woman next to me laughs and she says, “What are you doing here anyway? Tell us something: Who are you? What do you do?” I say I was invited here, I’m from Toronto, I’m a writer, I’m writing about the things I do here to remember them better and she says, “So what, you’re going to go home, you’re going to write a story about a terrible woman you met at a terrible dinner party or something? And no one wanted you there? There’s something to write about, there’s something for you to remember,” and I say no, it’s not like that, it’s not a weapon. The silence of the room is loud now like the engine of a plane. I get up from my seat and I put on my shoes and my coat, the people in the kitchen laughing, I can’t find my bag, the woman I came with she must have taken it, she must have left with my bag, my clothes and devices, the book I’d been writing in and my recorder with all of Nico’s words, every memory of her and of here gone. I leave, my legs brushing together through the silence of the dark hallways down to the street.
