Tolstoy and the Purple Chair (3 page)

Guards at the checkpoint stopped the car and ordered us to get out. We girls were separated from our parents and taken inside the elongated shed to a small room. It seemed to me as if we stood there huddled together and alone for hours. When we were finally led back outside, our parents were standing rigidly beside the car. Guards searched it from top to bottom. Our suitcases were piled up on the sidewalk and the doors of the car stood open, along with the roof of the trunk. A guard stood leaning over the trunk, his body half inside the depth of the car and his hands reaching down and pushing back into the empty spaces. Another guard circled the car with a mirror on wheels that allowed him to search underneath, while another perched in the front seat of the car and reached into the back, peeling back the seating to peer beneath the cushions. The guards even opened wide the hood of the car to stare deep into its guts.

“What are they looking for?” I asked.

“Shhh!” My mother shook her head, her lips pursed tightly together. One of the guards turned to look at me. His face was impassive, his eyes cold and his mouth a straight line of disapproval. When the search of the car was over, we were given back our passports, allowed to get in our car, and told to drive on to the other side. We passed through the no-man's-land between East and West, a stretch of fifty yards of asphalt glittering under the passing spotlights. Darkness reached in from either side of the traverse, and the gates of West Berlin beckoned before us. My father finally answered my question.

“They were looking for people in our car, seeing if we were carrying any relatives to the West.”

“And if they found someone?” I asked.

“They would be taken away, maybe killed.” My father was angry, looking back through the rearview mirror. He was not looking at us girls in the backseat. He was looking at the guards we'd left behind.

I saw my mother shoot my father a warning look, but he went on. “People die every day trying to leave, trying to get to the West. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Anne-Marie answered for all of us. She reached for my hand and squeezed.

One week later we flew home to Chicago. In my excitement to be home, I left
Harriet the Spy
, my notebook, and Piglet in the taxicab. My parents tried to track down the cab but without any luck. For weeks I had trouble sleeping. I woke up from nightmares I couldn't remember, crying and shaking. My mother bought me a new copy of
Harriet the Spy
, and a family friend sewed me a new Piglet. I bought myself a clean notebook and started in writing all over again. I wrote about Harriet, about Carol and about my grandmother, about my relatives in Poland and the terrors of Checkpoint Charlie. I wrote a poem about Anne-Marie and her hand coming for me across the lumpy mattress of my aunt's bed, and then across the backseat of our car as it carried us into the West. I don't have that notebook any longer, but I do have my second copy of
Harriet the Spy
, and I do have the stuffed pig. Comfort of the pig I outgrew—comfort of the book, never.

I needed comfort now. I needed hope. Hope that when life turns on you for the worst, it will turn back again, for the good. We girls had been protected for so long from misfortune. But then everything changed. My sister, the one with the reaching hand, was dead. Life had unleashed its unfairness, its random dispersal of pain, its uncaring lynching of certainty. I had tried running, but now I would try reading. I would trust in Connolly's promise that “words are alive, and literature becomes an escape, not from, but into living.”

My book reading would be a discipline. I knew there would be pleasure in my reading, but I needed to hold myself to a schedule as well. Without a commitment, the rest of life could creep in and steal time away, and I wouldn't read as much as I wanted to or needed to. I couldn't have my escape if I didn't make books my priority. There is always dust to sweep and laundry to fold; there is always milk to buy and dinner to cook and dishes to wash. But none of that could get in my way for one year. I was allowing myself one year to not run, not plan, not provide. A year of nots: not worry, not control, not make money. Sure, our family could use another income, but we'd gotten by for so long on just one salary, we could do it for one more year. We would lay off the extras and find enough in what we had already.

I planned to begin my book-a-day project on my forty-sixth birthday. I would read my first book that day, and the next day I would write my first review. The rules for my year were simple: no author could be read more than once; I couldn't reread any books I'd already read; and I had to write about every book I read. I would read new books and new authors, and read old books from favorite writers. I wouldn't read
War and Peace
, but I could read Tolstoy's last novel,
The Forged Coupon
. All the books would be ones I would have shared with Anne-Marie if I could have, ones we would have talked about, argued over, and some we would have agreed upon.

The summer before I turned forty-six, I had put together a Web site for book exchanges—allowing people who needed books to connect with people who wanted to give their old books away—and I decided to use that Web site as a place where I'd record my year of reading a book a day. It was already called Read All Day, a premonition of my life to come. Perfect. Anyone who has kids in school knows how hyped-up librarians and teachers are about getting kids to read every single day. I agreed with the hype, but why not push reading for adults too? Why not foster daily reading in adults? My year of intense reading would be my own project of escape, but my site would also be a place for nudging along other adults in their reading. The motto of the Read All Day Web site was “Great Good Comes from Reading Great Books.” My year could prove its truth.

I set myself up in a room downstairs, off the kitchen. It had a piano in it and George's tuba, along with a few discarded recorders and plenty of old music books. The room had two bookshelves, and I cleared away space for the books I'd be getting from the library, from bookstores, and from family. I dragged a paint-stained wooden desk—stolen from the playroom—and placed on top of it the computer abandoned to me by Meredith, my stepdaughter, when she'd upgraded to a laptop. There was one big chair in the room, and I pondered its fate.

The chair looked older than it was, but then it had been through a lot in the thirteen years we'd owned it. Jack had brought it home a few days before Michael was born. At the time, it was the most elegant piece of furniture in our apartment, glorious with its ivory white raised upholstery, ridged mahogany legs, amply stuffed arms, and gracefully curved back. But white? With our Magic Marker–equipped one-year-old on the loose and a baby on the way, it wouldn't remain white for long. And I knew from past experience that there would be more than just juice boxes leaking on the furniture with a new baby to be fed.

The chair stayed in our apartment—as it was purchased on sale, there was no returning it—but it did not stay white for long. Patches began to appear, with a rainbow of colors, purple (wine), brown (coffee), pink (Magic Marker), blue (bubble gum ice cream), and yellow (milk). By the time we came to child number three, the chair was so stained it looked like a world map. But it was still sturdy and very comfortable, the arms still amply stuffed and providing a good cushion for rocketing children. We had the chair reupholstered in a very tough fabric, muted purple with a pattern of flowers and vines, and invincible against stains.

As invincible as the chair was against stains, it was powerless against cats. Or one cat, in particular. Milo had been brought home from the shelter as a gift for Michael. He was a black-and-white longhair. Sweet in disposition, he meowed rarely and never scratched the furniture. But he did have one fault. Every once in a while he would pee, just a tiny, little bit, on the purple chair. It was as if he were marking the chair as his beloved chair and his alone. His marking worked. The odor of cat pee is daunting to the average nose-owning human, and no one could sit there for longer than a minute or two before hightailing it out of the chair. My husband wanted to dump the chair after smelling the ablutions of Milo's love, but I revolted. It was too good a chair, and I had by now too many memories associated with it. Meredith read to Peter snuggled up in that chair, Michael's birth announcement photo had been shot there, and the chair had been George's favorite nursing spot. Peter used it as a prop in his one-act plays involving kings and queens. Although it smelled, it was still regal.

I placed the chair in the farthest corner of the house and sprayed it daily with a magical elixir that managed to dull the odor to only mildly repulsive. The spray also worked to repel all future dousing by Milo. He never sat in or marked the chair again. Over the years the odor faded, and by now the chair had no real odor, only an occasional disagreeable whiff. It was still very sturdy and even more comfortable. The purple chair would be my dedicated reading chair.

I was ready—ready to sit down in my purple chair and read. For years, books had offered to me a window into how other people deal with life, its sorrows and joys and monotonies and frustrations. I would look there again for empathy, guidance, fellowship, and experience. Books would give me all that, and more. After three years of carrying the truth of my sister's death around with me, I knew I would never be relieved of my sorrow. I was not hoping for relief. I was hoping for answers. I was trusting in books to answer the relentless question of why I deserved to live. And of how I should live. My year of reading would be my escape back into life.

Chapter 3
Such Beauty in the World

Thinking back on it, this evening, with my heart and my stomach all like jelly, I have finally concluded, maybe that's what life is about: there is a lot of despair, but also the odd moment of beauty, where time is no longer the same . . . an always within never.

MURIEL BARBERY,

The Elegance of the Hedgehog

I STARTED READING
THE ELEGANCE OF THE HEDGEHOG
BY
Muriel Barbery on the train ride into New York City on the day of my forty-sixth birthday. The day had started with breakfast served up alongside kisses and hugs, envelopes and homemade cards waiting to the side. There was the usual card from my son Michael with its accurately numbered candles on the cake, each drawn in with its own flame. This was a cake to be wary of: so many candles, so much fire. There was a card from the cats, signed “from the cats” by Jack. We've always had cats but Jack never knows their names.

I opened the envelopes that had come in through the mail over the last few days. There was a card from my parents and one from Jack's parents, with the yearly cash enclosed. With fifty-plus children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and daughters- and sons-in-law, Jack's parents could go broke with birthday-card cash, but until they did, the gift was always there.

There was a final pile of cards for me to read, the slew of Hallmark mush that my husband is a sucker for and that I have come to look forward to. Tears and smiles along with our peanut-butter toast and coffee. I was grateful to be loved. I knew that most days I took the love for granted, just like I had taken life for granted, and this day I wanted to be different. I would begin my year of reading with gratitude. Gratitude for having all these lives and this love around me. Gratitude for living on into my forty-sixth year.

I smiled and cried some more when Natasha called to wish me a happy day. After breakfast I answered e-mails wishing me joy for the coming year. Only a few people knew of my plan to read a book every day for a year, and no one mentioned it. Everyone was sure I would have to drop out of the planned year of reading, and no one wanted to make me feel embarrassed if I did. They figured my obligations at school or the kids getting sick or holidays and vacations would force me to miss a day here or there. They thought I would end up scaling back, reading one or two books a week. But I knew I would stick with my books project. I was ready for the discipline. The plan could work around school hours and the driving, cleaning, cooking, and grocery shopping, and still meet its goals of escape, learning, pleasure. I was aching for that, needing that comfort of reading and anticipating the pleasure of sitting down in my purple chair with a book and calling it work. By giving it the name of work, I sanctified it.

Reading had always been a favorite thing to do, but now it would become a worthy endeavor. I could excuse myself from coffees, PTA meetings, and exercise by having work to do. Most everyone thought my project was crazy, but that didn't matter, not too much anyway. It was what I needed. I knew I was lucky to have the time and support to do this, and I wouldn't waste either. Once I'd made the decision to take on my book-a-day year, I did not question the commitment or the pleasure ahead. I made a plan, and then I stopped debating the pluses or minuses. I would take the time I could have spent debating my choice and instead throw myself into carrying it out.

When Jack and I talked about getting married, and then when we thought about having kids, I had been the same way. I made my choice and followed through with actions taken full force ahead, body and soul. Jack was the one, and I married him, for better and forget the worse. Four kids I wanted, and I had them one after the other, sticking my legs up into the air after sex to ensure fertilization and then, nine months later, using those legs as an anchor during delivery.

Now I had committed to reading a book a day. Not quite like marriage or motherhood but a commitment, nevertheless.

Reading
The Elegance of the Hedgehog
on the train was tough going at first. The first forty or so pages of the novel have lots of obscure references thrown in here and there about philosophy and music, movies and art. But I soon fell in love with the two narrators, Paloma and Renée. Paloma is twelve years old and mired in existential angst. She hides both her intelligence and her despair behind a caustic wit and manga novels. She's certain that there is no purpose or meaning to life, and she vows to kill herself on her thirteenth birthday. Wow and whoa: this kid cannot be serious. But I feared that she was.

Renée, the concierge of the high-toned building where Paloma lives, hides behind the facade of a dull, slow-witted working-class drone so that she can be invisible to the people around her. She wants to be left in peace to secretly enjoy the pleasure and comfort that books, music, art, and good food bring to her. I knew I had found a kindred spirit in Renée when I read her thoughts on books: “When something is bothering me, I seek refuge. No need to travel far; a trip to the realm of literary memory will suffice. For where can one find more noble distraction, more entertaining company, more delightful enchantment, than in literature?” Right on.

By the time my train hit New York City, I was hooked on
The Elegance of the Hedgehog
. I put it away long enough to have a birthday lunch with Jack and my parents. We sat on a balcony overlooking the Main Concourse at Grand Central and drank champagne. As we ate our meal, I told them about how it had been Anne-Marie who'd first pointed out Grand Central's magnificent ceiling to me, its golden constellations set into the barrel ceiling of the huge space. I had read about the ceiling in Mark Helprin's mythical
Winter's Tale
(a must read, if only for the ceiling description and the scene of a mighty mother skating triumphantly down the frozen Hudson River, baby on her back), but that was after Anne-Marie first showed it to me. The stars and figures were hard to make out in those days before its restoration, but under Anne-Marie's pointing finger, I gaped at the scope of the constellations. Anne-Marie had given architectural tours of New York City as a graduate student at NYU's Institute of Fine Arts, and she knew her stuff.

The ceiling in Grand Central is fascinating for a lot of reasons, but what most people don't realize is that the entire night sky is presented backward. The artist Paul César Helleu based his sky on a medieval manuscript that represented a God's-eye view of the universe, seen from above the stars rather than from below. “Or else Helleu just made a huge mistake and tried to explain it away by using the medieval excuse,” Anne-Marie explained. I could tell she thought he'd been a lazy scholar and made the huge mistake. Careful as she was in her own work, there was no question the ceiling would have been perfect under her direction.

Hopelessly late for the high school drop-off, I hopped back on the train after lunch to make it home in time for the middle school bus. I continued reading on the train, any potential sleepiness brought on by the several glasses of champagne beaten back by the story: I read with eyes wide open. Barely glancing up at the ticket collector, I mumbled, “Thanks” and thumbed on through the pages. A new tenant moves into the building where Paloma and Renée live. He befriends the two of them, and the gentle force of Kakuro's friendship coaxes Paloma, and then Renée, out of hiding. They begin to reveal their inner selves and to find in each other understanding and appreciation. Together, the three of them, Kakuro, Paloma, and Renée, recognize the infinite possibilities of surprise that life offers. Neither people nor life is so predictable after all.

I arrived home in time to dish out after-school snacks. Peanut butter on crackers, apple slices, apple juice. Chocolates given to me by my mother, shared now with the boys. More birthday kisses, and then I took myself away. I planted myself in my purple chair. I had just a few more chapters to go in
The Elegance of the Hedgehog
.

Would Paloma stop fearing her future? Would Renée stop fearing her past? The last pages of the book were brilliant with wisdom. Each moment caught in a lifetime of experience can be brought forward. Sustenance in the here and now is found in the past. Good things have happened before and will happen again. Moments of beauty and light and happiness live forever. Paloma commits herself to finding those “moments of always within never” as a reason to live. She is anticipating moments of beauty because she knows they will come. The proof is in the moments she has already experienced. I could find those “moments of always within never” as a comfort to my pain, and as a promise for my future. I remembered what I had forgotten in my years of sorrow after Anne-Marie died: that I would always have my memories of Anne-Marie to sustain me.

I walked out into the kitchen, slammed the book down on the counter, and said to my kids, “This is going to be a great year.”

The Elegance of the Hedgehog
reminded me, bone and blood, heart and soul, of Anne-Marie. It was as if I could hear her saying to me, “Yes, Nina, life is hard, unfair, painful. But life is also guaranteed—one hundred percent, no doubt, no question—to offer unexpected and sudden moments of beauty, joy, love, acceptance, euphoria.” The good stuff. It is our ability to recognize and then hold on to the moments of good stuff that allows us to survive, even thrive. And when we can share the beauty, hope is restored.

People often talk about the importance of living in the here and now, and express envy at how children enjoy their moments of pleasure without dwelling on the past or worrying about the future. Fine, agreed. But it is experience—a life lived—that allows us to recall moments of happiness and feel happy again. It is our ability to relive a moment that gives us strength. Our survival as a species is linked to this ability to remember (which berries not to eat; to stay away from the big toothy animals; to huddle close to fire but not touch it). But survival of our inner selves also depends upon memories. Why else do we have such acute noses? I smell an evergreen and swoon with delight. Why? Because of the many pleasant hours passed at the foot of a Christmas tree. And the smell of popcorn is so seductive because of the movies I've enjoyed while eating it. The taste of a good green olive makes me hungry, because an olive or two have accompanied so many delicious meals and flowing wines.

I stood in my kitchen and looked at my children, my birthday cards set out in a standing row, the school artwork on the walls, and the last zinnias of the year picked and stuffed into a pitcher. Past and present melded together. Cards the same as every year and new cards; artwork from when my oldest was still in kindergarten and his latest piece from ninth grade, alongside paintings, masks, and prints made by his brothers over the years; zinnias planted in the spring and now picked for our pleasure in the fall. Past and present together offer hope for the future. Maybe it was my past and present that would provide the glue for the two parts of me, the part that couldn't leave Anne-Marie's hospital room and the part that couldn't get away fast enough. With books by my side, and my past and my present, all together, I would move into a future. Books, past, and present pushing me up and offering hope from what can be remembered. Offering warning of what should not be forgotten. Tamping back the blood from the harsh cuts of living.

Could memories of times when I was filled with peace, or overflowing with love, or resplendent in gratitude sustain me through the horror of losing my sister? Renée demonstrated to Paloma—and to me—that if we are mindful enough to grasp the beauty of such moments, we can hang on to those moments forever. Kakuro showed both of them—and me—that such moments are best shared, either in the moment or in memory. And Paloma showed Renée—and me—how life's possibilities, future memories to find and grasp, can chisel away at imprisoning sorrow.

I remembered then how entwined memory had come to me before and offered comfort. I spent my junior year of college abroad in Barcelona. One rainy afternoon a few months after I'd settled into life there, I went by myself to the Museu d'Art Modern in the Parc de la Ciutadella. The museum was empty, owing to the weather and the season (not a hot time for tourists), and I took my time walking from room to room. I was thinking about a boy I'd just broken up with. Nico was a sweet boy with a great motorcycle and good looks but not much else. There was no point to my relationship with him, and yet he had been fun to be with. He helped keep my homesickness at bay, and he showed me parts of Barcelona I wouldn't have found on my own. I had suspected that my entertainment value as the American girl was fading, especially given my reluctance to do more than hold his waist as we weaved in and out of traffic on his motorcycle. We kissed and hugged during our nights out together, but I resisted anything further. I didn't want to fulfill the reputation of the easy American, and I suspected there was an old girlfriend waiting patiently for him every evening after he dropped me off.

The evening before my solo trip to the museum, Nico had taken me for a ride on his motorcycle north of Barcelona along the coast. We arrived finally at a long pier, busy with other motorcycles moving slowly up and down its long, wide boards leading out into the sea. We rode almost to the end of the pier. We stopped, and I looked out across the black expanse of water.

A shift in clouds let the moon come through. Suddenly the water was alive, glittering and sparkling with a long, undulating ribbon of moonbeam. I can remember still how cold it was that evening, the salty smell of the air, the low hum of other couples as they rolled up and down the pier, and the mesmerizing play of moonlight over the water. Nico tried to get me started on a session of kissing and groping, but I pulled away, climbing off the bike to get closer to the sea. This view was what I wanted; I had never seen anything like it. The water was exploding with lights, like firecrackers in the sky, the light of the moon reflecting and multiplying across the waves. I did not want to leave. I wanted to stay out on that pier until the moonlight settled down. I wanted to be there when the sun came up and a different light, the warming glow of day, came over the water. But Nico was insistent that he had to get back to the city. I climbed onto the motorcycle, and we rode off. We both knew our relationship was over.