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Authors: Peter Cameron

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BOOK: The City of Your Final Destination
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“Is that what you feel?” asked Portia.
“Yes,” said Arden.
Omar was thoroughly soaked by the time he reached the millhouse. He knocked on the door, but there was no answer. He tried to open it, but it appeared to be locked. Then he remembered that it stuck, so he pushed hard and it opened. It was dark inside. If no one is here I can sleep on the couch, he thought, and tomorrow morning I'll walk into Tranqueras. I think I know the way.
He stood in the hall, dripping on the stone floor. He heard a door open far above him and a light appeared on the top landing. Adam stood there in his bathrobe, looking down at him.
“Who is it?” he called.
“It's me,” Omar called up. “Omar Razaghi.”
“Omar! What are you doing here?”
“I don't know,” said Omar. “I came to see Arden, and—it's a
long story. I wonder if I could stay here tonight. Or if you could drive me to Tranqueras.”
“I don't drive anymore,” said Adam. “Besides, Pete has the car. He's in Montevideo. Come up, come up and tell me your long story. I'd descend but I'm in bed with a touch of
la grippe
. There's a bottle of scotch in the kitchen, bring it up with you. I've been longing for it all day.”
“Where's the kitchen?” asked Omar.
“Straight ahead of you, through the living room,” said Adam. “You might have to wash some of the glasses in the sink if you can't find clean ones. I'm afraid I am not the housekeeper Pete was. I'm returning to my bed. Hurry.”
He disappeared back through the doorway. Omar found the kitchen, and the scotch, and washed two glasses, and brought them upstairs. Adam was sitting in a very large bed. He did not look well. There was one lamp lit on a table beside the bed, casting a small golden pool of light. The rest of the room was quite dark.
“Drag that chair over here and sit down. Good Lord! You're soaked. Are you wet through?”
“Yes,” said Omar.
“Well, you'd better undress, and dry off. There's a nice warm robe of Pete's hanging behind the door. Put that on. But first pour me a scotch.”
Omar poured some scotch into a glass and handed it to Adam. Then he went over and undressed in the gloom by the door, and put on the woolen robe that was Pete's.
“You need something for your feet. In the top drawer of the dresser there are socks.”
Omar found a pair of socks and put them on.
“Now, come sit down,” said Adam. “Move that chair. No, the other one. Over here, near the bed. And pour yourself a scotch, and tell me your long story.”
Omar followed all of Adam's instructions save the last. He did
not know where to begin, or how to tell, his story. He sipped his scotch, and then regarded it.
After a moment Adam said, “I take it you need prompting.”
“Yes,” said Omar. “I suppose. I don't know where to begin.”
“I am, as you might have discerned by now, a traditionalist. Begin at the beginning.”
“I suppose that would be when I came here last time,” said Omar. “In January.”
“It can't be a very long story,” said Adam, “if it only began then.”
“Well, of course there are parts before that, but that is when things changed.”
“What things changed?”
“I think I changed,” said Omar.
“How?” asked Adam. “Why?”
“I changed—in many ways. For one, I think, I fell in love with Arden.”
“Did you?” said Adam. “What a silly thing to do. And what about your lovely girlfriend? Doris?”
“Deirdre. We've broken up. It wasn't right, between us.”
“And so you have come back to declare your love for Arden?”
“Yes,” said Omar. “You see, we kissed. The day I got stung by the bee, and fell out of the tree. We had walked up to see the gondola. And we kissed, outside the boathouse.”
“How romantic. And then you were stung by a bee, and puffed up, and became comatose.”
“Yes, and when I came to Deirdre was here. And I didn't know what had happened with Arden, I felt something had happened, but Arden was so weird and distant and then I went back.”
“And wrote us that lovely letter telling us you had changed your mind about the book.”
“Yes,” said Omar. “I'm sorry about that. I mean, I'm sorry I caused you all so much trouble. Anyway, I came back to see Arden,
to ask her if she loved me, to tell her I loved her, but she—she told me it was wrong of me to come. She was awful. I think I hurt her in some way. She told me to go. So I left. And it was raining and I couldn't think of anywhere else to come except here.”
“And here you are,” said Adam.
“Yes,” said Omar. “I'm afraid I've made a mess of things. Of just about everything.”
“Drink your scotch,” said Adam, “and pour me a little bit more.”
Omar poured more scotch into Adam's glass and sipped at his own. “What do you think I should do?” he asked. “What can I do?”
“You must go back to see Arden tomorrow. Of course she threw you out today, it was right of her. You cannot descend upon people from out of the blue and proclaim your love and expect them to reciprocate. A traditionalist like me knows that.”
“What must you do, then?” asked Omar. “What must I do?”
“You must go back tomorrow and apologize. You have taken her for granted—”
“But I didn't! Really, I did not!”
“Well, it appears as though you did and that's what's important. You must go back and apologize. She may send you away again. If she does you must go away, but you must not give up. Arden loves you.”
“Does she?” asked Omar. “How do you know?”
“It was apparent to me from the moment you arrived. Perhaps even before: perhaps she loved you when you sent the letter. It is ridiculous how, and how easily, people fall in love. Especially Arden : she was very ripe for the picking; if a baboon had knocked on her door she may well have fallen in love with it.”
“So you don't really think she loves me? It's just, just the circum——”
“Of course she loves you. She loves you now probably as much as she ever will, because she knows you so little.”
“It feels as if we know each other, though,” said Omar. “There was something, some connection, right from the beginning, from the very first night.”
“I'm glad I was spared witnessing that. No wonder Caroline fled. Have you heard? She has moved to New York City. She has abandoned us.”
“Portia told me. What is she doing there?”
“Her sister died, and left Caroline her apartment. I cannot tell you what she does there. What did she do here? Nothing. What does anyone do anywhere? Nothing.”
“Perhaps she is painting,” said Omar.
“My point exactly,” said Adam: “Nothing.”
“And Pete is gone too?”
“Yes. I didn't need you to smuggle the paintings after all. Pete found his own way out. The woman he sold to in New York has set him up very nicely in Montevideo. He comes back from time to time, when he is in the area, looking for junk.”
“Do you miss him?” asked Omar.
“How brutal you are! You are a biographer, after all. Asking brutal questions.”
“I'm sorry,” said Omar.
“Of course I miss him,” said Adam. “But it is better this way. Isn't that what people say: it is better this way? Meaning I cannot bear it but I will. I will close my eyes and stumble forward into the darkness.”
“I'm sorry,” Omar said again.
Adam said nothing. He held out his empty glass, and Omar poured some more scotch into it.
“How odd,” said Adam, after a moment. “I believe in God: I was lying up here, in bed, thinking about the scotch bottle all the way downstairs in the kitchen, knowing I was too weak to walk down and get it—more precisely too weak to walk back up after having gotten it—but wanting it, oh, yes, wanting it, wanting just a
little bit of scotch, a wee dram to warm me, to dull me, to make me feel round and warm and content and sleepy, and then you appeared. Is that not proof of God? I know no better reason to believe.”
“Is there anything else you want? From downstairs? Have you eaten?”
“I don't know what you could find down there that's edible. Why don't you go look? There may be tins of soup somewhere.”
“All right,” said Omar.
“And could I prevail upon you—it is really too mortifying, but I feel somehow you will not mind—there is a chamber pot beneath the bed full of my water. Could you empty it into the toilet downstairs?”
“Of course,” said Omar.
He stood up and found the pot: a large ceramic bowl, beneath the bed. “I'll be right back,” he said.
He carefully carried the bowl of urine down the three flights of stairs and emptied it into the toilet. Then he went into the kitchen. He could find no tins of soup. There were some apples, and a loaf of bread and jar of honey. Omar put these on a silver tray and carried them back up the stairs.
Adam was asleep. Omar stood beside the bed and watched Adam sleep. He had a dignity, a beauty, that was apparent—that was more apparent—when he was sleeping. Omar did not wake him. He took one of the apples and some of the bread and left the rest on the tray and turned out the light and went back down the stairs.
He ate the apple and bread standing up in the living room. There was an afghan folded across the back of the sofa. He turned out the lights and lay down and covered himself with it. He felt very far away from everything. But, he thought, Arden was wrong: it was not wrong to come here. Not if you understood it. She did not understand it, she did not understand him. No one understood
him. That made him sad. He felt sad and alone and unconnected and lost. And cold, too: despite Pete's woolen robe and the afghan, he felt cold.
The next morning Arden waited with Portia at the gates for the school bus, and after it drove away she stood there for a moment. She did not want to return to the house. I will go see how Adam is, she thought, and began walking toward the millhouse. It had rained all night and the road was damp. A residual version of rain continued in the woods: a persistent, loud dripping.
When she turned the corner and saw Omar walking toward her, she panicked. She thought about running into the woods, hiding in the woods, but she could not. He had seen her. For a moment they both stopped walking, and stood about fifty yards apart, on the wet, deserted road, looking at each other. Then she began walking toward him, and he began walking toward her.
They stopped a few feet apart. “Good morning,” she said.
“Good morning,” he said. He looked down at the road, quickly, and then looked up at her. “I was coming to see you,” he said. “I hope you don't mind. I was coming to apologize. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.”
“No,” she said. She held out her hand, baring her palm, as if she were stopping traffic. She said no again.
He said nothing.
“I'm sorry,” she said. “I was just scared.” Her hand was still extended and she reached it a little farther and touched him. She clutched the lapel of his jacket and then smoothed it, then touched it again, laying her palm against his chest. Then she took her hand away. “I can't really explain it—after Jules, after what happened with Jules—I felt as if I had forfeited my right to be in love, to be loved. And I didn't think I could bear it. I'm scared. I don't know how I can bear it.”
“Bear what?” asked Omar.
“The—the impossibility of it. You coming here. And then coming back, again. How could it happen? It all seems so random, so fragile. Like glass waiting to break.”
She was weeping. Omar reached out and took her hand. He pulled her close to him and held her. “It seems just the opposite to me,” he said.
Deirdre wrote to Omar in Toronto care of his parents, but never heard back from him. Her one-year position at Bucknell was extended for two more years, and then once again for a fourth and final year. So she began to look for other jobs, and since a chapter from her dissertation (“Rose Macaulay, Penelope Mortimer, Nina Bawden: The Fiction of Gender, the Gender of Fiction”) had been published in
PMLA
, the offers for interviews were numerous. In January she went to New York City to interview at Barnard. After the interview she had lunch with two professors; they bid her goodbye on the street corner. She had an hour or two to kill before her train departed and asked them if there was a decent bookstore around.
They directed her to a store called Labyrinth, which sold mainly university press books, and she spent a happy hour browsing through its shelves. She was about to leave when the title of a book on one of the remainder tables caught her eye:
To Go No Farther: Elizabeth Bishop's Years in Brazil
by Omar Razaghi. It was a little, ugly paperback book: black letters on a solid mustard-colored
cover, published by the University of New Mexico Press. She picked up a copy and read the blurb on the back:
This book, number 13 in our series on 20th-Century South American Writers, examines the years Elizabeth Bishop lived in Brazil and the work she produced there. Through keen literary analysis of her poetry and translations, and a deft re-creation of her life in Brazil, Razaghi makes a compelling case for Bishop to be considered a writer of the Southern Hemisphere. Here is a new look at Bishop, as an author who found a home and voice far from her native shores.
20th-Century South American Writers is edited by Diogenes González-Barahona and Susan Shreve Shepard as part of the University of New Mexico's South American Literature Studies Program.
OMAR RAZAGHI was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1969 and emigrated to Canada in 1979. He has a B.A. in History from York University and an M.A. in Literature from the University of Kansas, where he was awarded the Dolores Faye and Bertram Siebert Petrie Award for Biographical Studies, based upon his work on Jules Gund. Razaghi lives in Uruguay with his wife and two daughters, Portia and Adela.
Deirdre looked at the dedication:
To Arden
. She bought five copies—they were only $1.98 each.
Deirdre got the job at Barnard and moved to New York. The following winter a man she met at a Tai Chi class invited her to the opera (
Les contes d'Hoffmann
). The second intermission found them leaning against the Dress Circle balustrade, looking down upon the
crowded Grand Tier promenade, discussing the sexual politics of trouser roles. There was an area below them separated off with a row of potted trees, beyond which people sat on conspicuous display at little tables idiotically eating desserts. Deirdre was about to make a comment about the absurd ostentation of this, when she thought she recognized a woman seated at one of the tables.
“I think I know that woman down there,” she said. “I want to go and say hello. Will you excuse me?”
“Sure,” said her companion. “I'm going to the men's room. I'll meet you back at our seats.”
“Okay,” said Deirdre. She hastened down the crimson curving tunnel of stairs to the level below, and made her way through the throng toward the makeshift restaurant. By the time she pushed herself through the crowd, the woman was getting up from the table, leaving a man behind, walking toward her. For a moment Deirdre thought the woman had recognized her, but then she realized she had not. Deirdre stepped closer as the woman passed her and said, “Excuse me, are you Caroline Gund?”
The woman stopped and looked at Deirdre. She was wearing a long black skirt and lilac-colored watered silk blouse that tied in a huge bow on one of her hips. Her hair was gray now, but still long and elegantly styled. She wore a necklace of hammered silver leaves and matching earrings. “Yes,” she said, “I am.”
“I'm Deirdre MacArthur,” said Deirdre. “Do you remember me? I met you several years ago, at Ochos Rios. I was there with Omar Razaghi.”
Caroline smiled and held out her hand. “Deirdre, yes, of course. How are you?”
“I'm fine,” said Deirdre. “I saw you from up there”—she turned and pointed to the gallery above them—“and I just wanted to say hello.”
“Are you enjoying the opera?” asked Caroline.
“Yes,” said Deirdre, “very much. How are things in Ochos Rios?” It sounded like that song: “How Are Things in Glocca Morra?”
“I wouldn't know,” said Caroline. “I live here now. I moved here several years ago. Shortly after you visited us, in fact.” Caroline carried a little bag, beaded with black jets. She turned it over in her hands.
“Have you read Omar's book?”
“Omar wrote a book?”
“Yes,” said Deirdre. “About Elizabeth Bishop in Brazil.”
“I haven't seen it,” said Caroline.
“It's quite good,” said Deirdre.
Caroline said nothing. She was looking at her bag.
“And apparently he's living down there. He's married Arden.”
“Yes, I had heard something like that,” said Caroline.
“You aren't in touch with them?”
Caroline looked up and smiled. “No,” she said, “I am not in touch with them. And how are you? Are you still teaching in—where is it? Nebraska?”
“Kansas,” said Deirdre. “No, I'm here in New York. At Barnard. So you don't go back to Ochos Rios?”
“No,” said Caroline. “I've remarried. My life is here now.”
“Are you still painting?” asked Deirdre.
“No,” said Caroline. “No, I don't paint.” She made a gesture with her hand, as if she were brushing away smoke. “I'm afraid you will have to excuse me. I was on my way to the ladies' room and you know how awful the lines are, and I don't want to miss the barcarolle—”
“Of course,” said Deirdre. “I just wanted to say hello. It's nice to see you.”
“Lovely to see you,” said Caroline, “enjoy the rest of the opera.” She pressed Deirdre's hand, and then disappeared into the crowd.
Deirdre went out on the balcony, where people stood about, shivering and smoking. Even though it was freezing, the fountain at the center of the plaza was perfunctorily founting, and a bright, steamy halo surrounded it. She watched the steam tumble up into the darkness, disappear.
Caroline's husband stood up as she passed by him. After she sat down he leaned over and arranged her shawl around her shoulders. She had put on perfume; he could smell it. He leaned closer and inhaled, kissed her cheek. She smiled, but she was looking straight ahead, implacably, at the gold curtain.
“Who was that? The girl you were talking to?”
“Oh,” said Caroline. “No one. She mistook me for someone she knew.”
Deirdre returned to her seat. She found a tissue in her coat pocket and blew her nose. Her companion took her hand. “You're freezing,” he said.
“I went outside,” said Deirdre. “It's cold.”
“Here,” he said. He took both her hands in his. He had large, warm hands. He squeezed her hands between his. “Who was that woman?”
“It was a woman I met when I was in Uruguay,” said Deirdre.
“Uruguay? When where you in Uruguay?”
“A few years ago,” said Deirdre. “Well, five years ago. Almost exactly.”
“What were you doing in Uruguay?”
Deirdre shook her head.
“Tell me,” he said.
“Oh,” said Deirdre, “it's a long story.”
“Tell me,” he said again.
She opened her mouth to speak, but the dimming lights silenced her. The conductor appeared and was applauded. He raised his arms, and the music began.
BOOK: The City of Your Final Destination
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