Dreams of Bread and Fire (19 page)

“I missed you,” he said. His lips curved slightly into a smile.

The smallest smile. The light was faint, but in it was the promise of a pleasure she couldn’t decline.

In the morning Ani dragged herself downstairs to see Sydney off to school, leaving Van asleep. The bed was empty when she returned. There was a note on the table saying he had gone for a run and would call from the corner. He had left his wallet on the bookshelf, along with a pen and some coins. The wallet was brown leather, worn at its corners, the kind that folded in half.

Searching another person’s wallet—invading a private space—wasn’t a nice thing to do. Ani had sometimes been driven to this kind of prying when she was living with Asa and he had gone emotionally underground. Once when she found a girl’s name and number scrawled on a strip of paper, Ani had flushed it down the toilet. These were her other sins of stealth: reading letters from his friends, skimming his journal, and eavesdropping on telephone conversations.

When she was little she used to sneak into their room and explore the top drawer of her mother’s dresser: a fake pearl necklace, a pair of white kid gloves, and a velvet clutch with a golden clasp. In the very back of the drawer she found a small laminated black-and-white photograph of her parents on their wedding day. They were on a corner in Manhattan, beetle-roofed cars frozen in the street behind them. Violet wore a white skirt and jacket with a white hat topping her upswept black hair. Her lips were dark with lipstick and she was radiantly happy. David Silver wore a black suit, a white shirt, and a black tie. His arm was around Violet’s slim waist, his eyes turned toward his bride.

Ani wished her mother would secretly know that Ani was rummaging in the drawer and leave her gifts of knowledge. Ani wanted her father’s driver’s license, or his birth certificate, or a love letter he had written to Violet. She even imagined her father writing to her from heaven and sending the note by angel courier. The angel would slide the envelope into the back of the drawer where Ani would find it.

Dear Ani,

Behind my mansion there is a pond and on its surface I watch reflections of the earthly world. The mirror that you stand before is a window through which I can observe you. When I see tears on your face I want to reach out and brush them away. . . .

But every time she looked Ani held the same photograph, always the same.

Not knowing exactly what she was seeking, Ani opened Van’s wallet. In its folds were several hundred-franc notes and a few coins. There were no cards of any kind, nothing with his name on it. He must have left his identity papers in one of his pockets. She searched his jeans and came up empty. In one jacket pocket she found a metal key ring with three keys and in the other a
carnet
of yellow metro tickets. No passport.

When Van called from the corner, Ani went down. Madame Spinelli stood framed in her doorway as Van crossed the threshold in his sodden running clothes with a brown
boulangerie
bag clutched in one hand. The woman glared at Ani disapprovingly, disappeared into her apartment, and closed the door.

That afternoon Ani talked with Tacey, preempting anything the concierge might have to report.

“I’ve got a new boyfriend,” Ani said.

“The Communist?” Tacey asked.

Ani fought back exasperation. “My friend from Watertown. He stayed with me last night. Madame Spinelli saw him.”

“I heard,” Tacey said dryly.

“Is it okay with you if he stays over some nights?”

Tacey paused to consider. “Where does he live?”

“On the boulevard Voltaire.”

“You’d probably be late all the time if you slept there, and that would be a bother,” Tacey mused. “Just as long as John doesn’t know anything about it, I suppose it’s okay. I’ll speak to the concierge.”

Ani was baby-sitting until midnight on Friday. After Sydney was asleep, she let Van in and sent him upstairs to wait. On Saturday they lazed in bed until afternoon.

They strolled to the Pompidou Center and sat outside on the plaza near the fountain watching people walk by. Later they walked to the place de la Bastille for supper at a brasserie.

Van spilled some salt on the black tabletop, then traced a spiral in the white grains. He seemed sad and pensive.

“What are you thinking about?” Ani asked him.

“Mount Auburn Street,” he said. “Is Kay’s Market still there?”

“Of course. Randy’s Bowl-a-Way is gone, though. There’s some law office or something there. And you remember Lucy Sevanian’s dad’s tailor shop?”

“Sure.”

“He sold it,” Ani said.

“You and Lucy were like salt and pepper shakers,” Van commented.

“She was my best friend from third grade to senior year,” she said.

“Almost as long as we’ve known each other.”

“Except Lucy and I have drifted apart,” Ani said, a little sadly. “I haven’t seen her since freshman year.

“When Lucy and I were eight there was this boy named Robert Uzkonian in our class. He drove Lucy crazy. He always wanted to hold her hand and sit next to her. Lucy couldn’t stand him. There was something the matter with him. He drooled. He banged his wrists together so much that the teacher made him sit on his hands.

“One day when Robert was absent, Mrs. Van Dee sent Lucy outside to check on the weather. While Lucy was gone the teacher told the class not to speak to her when she came back. We were to stand around in groups, talking to each other, and if Lucy tried to speak to us we were supposed to turn our backs on her.”

“What was that about?” Van asked.

“She was giving Lucy a lesson in unkindness. Lucy completely ignored Robert, and now she would know how it felt.”

“What happened?” he asked.

“When Lucy came back she went to the teacher’s desk and the teacher pretended she didn’t see or hear her. Then Lucy came over to me. We were friends. We sat together. We traded from our lunches. I saw the teacher, who was staring at me, daring me to defy her. And I turned my back on Lucy. I think that was the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

“The worst?”

“Well, I’ve shoplifted. I’ve lied. I’ve fornicated. But betraying my best friend?”

“I don’t know if there are many eight-year-olds who could have done different. Did you and Lucy ever talk about it?” Van asked.

“No. I gave her my cupcakes and cookies at lunch for a week. It was a kind of penance.”

The waiter cleared their plates.

“You want tea?” Van asked.

Ani checked her watch. “We better get going. It’s past eleven.”

“Come to my place,” Van said.

“I have to be at the Bartons’ early.”

“We’ll put you in a taxi by seven,” he assured her.

In Van’s building they rode the elevator to the penultimate floor, climbing a flight of narrow stairs to the top. Ani followed Van down a long dingy hallway where the paint was peeling and plaster had come out in patches. Ani stopped to use the communal WC that stank of urine and cheap cologne.

Van’s tiny whitewashed room contained a simple desk, a wooden side chair, a washbasin with a mirror above it, a tiny fridge, and a set of yellow cabinets that looked like refugees from someone’s kitchen. Ani noticed that the top doors on the cabinet were padlocked. A bare lightbulb hung from the ceiling and a gooseneck lamp sat on the desk. Over the desk was a shelf on which there were a few books: a French dictionary, some tattered paperbacks—mostly history and political science, Ani noted, no novels or poetry—and a serious-looking clothbound book with Armenian lettering on its spine. The walls were otherwise bare.

The bed, which on closer examination turned out to be two stacked foam mattresses, ran the length of the wall opposite the door. The white sheet was neatly folded over a navy wool blanket. Above the bed the room’s only window looked out on an inner courtyard.

“It’s like a monk’s cell.” Ani kicked off her shoes and sat down on the bed.

He sat down next to her, prying his sneakers off one at a time. “I was aiming for that. When I moved in it was a dank closet filled with broken furniture and stacks of magazines.”

The mattress was wide enough for sex, but sleeping was another matter. Ani dozed in snatches, unable to find a comfortable position. Finally, around two-thirty, Van pushed the desk and chair against the door, making enough space to separate the mattresses and lay them side by side. They were both wide awake by then, so Van lit a candle and put it on the shelf under the mirror. He stretched out on the bed with one arm behind his head while Ani leaned against the cold plaster wall and pulled his feet into her lap. She began to massage one of them.

“Hey, you’re good at that,” he said.

“I took a massage workshop when I was in college. I learned all the homely arts: massage, knitting, and self-defense. Some friends and I got a nurse from the women’s health center to come and show us how to do pelvic self-exams. Everyone had a hand mirror. The party favors were plastic speculums.”

“Don’t think I’ve ever seen one of those.”

“They look kind of like duck beaks. Elena and I used to put on puppet shows with them. Just for ourselves, of course.”

“Is she your best friend?”

“She’s the one I talked to about everything. She’s in New York now. That’s part of the reason I decided to go there.”

“When are you leaving?”

“June fifteenth.”

“You going back to Watertown first?”

“For the summer.” She pulled his other foot into her lap.

“I haven’t been home in four years. Maybe I’ll fly back with you,” he said, almost wistfully.

Her mind leaped from that statement to a wedding at the First Armenian Church. Her grandmother and his grandmother sat together weeping with joy into their pressed white handkerchiefs. Baba led her down the aisle toward the altar, where Van waited in a black tuxedo. No. That was all wrong. A two-minute town hall ceremony presided over by a justice of the peace. Then a party at the Armenian Cultural Center. The Armenian Cultural Center? What was she thinking? It was better than the VFW hall. How about the Sheraton Commander Ballroom? Maybe a party in the backyard. The lilacs were in bloom and the forsythia leaves shone a handsome green.

“That would be great,” was what she said.

“Do you know what yesterday was?” he asked.

She was disappointed that he had changed the subject. She was hoping for a firm commitment on the trip home. “Sunday?”

“April twenty-fourth.”

“Damn. Forgot to write Martyr’s Day on my calendar.” Her tone was more flippant than she intended.

Van didn’t respond for a minute. Then he asked, “Did your grandparents talk about it?”

“Forbidden topic in our house. I always had the idea it would kill my grandmother.”

“My grandmother used to give lectures in churches and clubs. She’s a smart woman. She doesn’t do it anymore, though. It kind of tired her out.”

“She gave me a book for high school graduation,” Ani said.

“Which one?”

“It was called
The Murder of a Nation.
” Ani could still see the inscription written in a looping hand on the title page:
Souvenir to Miss Ani Kersamian Silver from Aunt Sophie Nahabedian.

Van said, “The Morgenthau. She had a box of those in her closet.”

The night she had received the book Ani had cracked open the spine as she lay in bed. Skimming a few pages, she was put off by the fusty prose and so began to flip through the captioned photos.
FISHING VILLAGE ON LAKE VAN
:
in this district 55,000 Armenians were massacred
;
A VIEW OF HARPOOT
:
where massacres of men took place on a large scale
;
THOSE WHO FELL BY THE WAYSIDE
. This last showed a row of decomposing bodies strewn along the edge of a dusty road. Ani had closed the book and turned out the light.

That night she had dreamed she was preparing for a long journey. She packed some clothes, her Bible, a toothbrush, and a box of saltines in a cardboard suitcase. She stopped in a thrift shop to buy a raincoat for the trip. The black slicker she tried on had metal buckles and yellow fluorescent stripes on it, like a fireman’s coat, and it came down to her ankles. As she examined herself in the full-length mirror, a saleswoman came up behind her and said, I wouldn’t wrinkle my nose up at that coat if I were you, honey. It will come in handy when you’re digging trenches in the rain.

In the dream Ani had realized she was being sent to a Nazi concentration camp. When Ani turned she saw her grandmother gesticulating at her from the sidewalk through a plate glass window. As Ani watched Grandma metamorphosed into a little girl in a long brown dress caked with mud. Two policemen grabbed the child by the arms and dragged her away.

April 24 was Genocide Commemoration Day. Now it had an official name. When Ani was ten she had opened the church bulletin one April Sunday to see the listing
Commemoration of the 1915 Massacres, Mr. Torkom Norabedian.
After the invocation and the hymn, Pastor Duke announced that instead of his regular sermon Mr. Norabedian, one of the church deacons, would speak.