”Odysseus turned his back on the harbour and followed a rough track leading
through the woods and up to the hills towards the place where Athene had
told him…”
Richard read on for a time. He was restless but tried to take an interest in
Odysseus’s journey to the home of his loyal “swineherd” — what a word, what
a way to make a living! — who of course doesn’t recognise him (nobody ever
recognised anybody in these old books), but offers Odysseus a meal anyway
and bangs his ear off with complaints. Now and then Richard glanced over at
Ana, asleep beside him. He kept willing her to wake, to turn and open her
arms to him. No such luck. Gloomy, impatient, he went back to The Odyssey.
Ana had left it on the bedside table, open to this chapter, which Richard
found boring and implausible. He leafed ahead to the part where Odysseus
strings his bow and slaughters all the suitors, but there was a lot more
fancy description and speechifying than he remembered from the version he’d
read as a kid. He was supposed to have read it again, a couple years ago, as
part of his freshman core at Columbia, but he’d come down with the flu that
week.
It was a library book. He studied the withdrawal dates — few of them and far
between — then closed it and put it back down.
Ana had only stirred a little when he turned on the lamp. Now he switched it
off and plumped his pillow and fooled with the covers, hoping that all this
would do the trick, but she slept on, snoring softly, face to the wall. The
bed was narrow, and in the dark he became even more aware of the heat from
her back and her legs, especially her legs. He touched his knee to the
tender crook of hers and she drew away, leaving him jangly and resentful,
but conscious also that he had no right to be, that she’d already given
herself twice that night and had to get up early with a full day of
waitressing ahead of her; he had only one class to attend, in the afternoon.
But knowing this did not take the edge off his need — for it felt like need,
nothing less — to have her against him again, her open mouth moving on his,
her fingers digging into his back.
Jesus! He had to think of something else.
But what? Even thinking of something else, he’d know that he was doing it to
distract himself, and that thought would lead right back to this bed, to the
weight of Ana beside him, her breath, her heat. Still, if he kept it up long
enough maybe he’d fall asleep, or at least be awake and ready when her alarm
went off.
Not that he’d pressure her. Unless they hurried, which she didn’t like, she’d
have to go to work without breakfast or a shower. He’d just give her a look,
his special look, and she’d know, and then she could do whatever she wanted.
And he wouldn’t act hurt if she didn’t want to. Really he wouldn’t. Not this
time.
Think of something else. Okay. The Exorcist —this old novel he’d found in his
dormitory lounge. Richard had seen the movie with the possessed girl whose
head spins on her neck like a top, but he hadn’t known that it came from a
book — not that the book was great literature or anything. Still, it was
pretty interesting. The writer had done a lot of research on exorcisms, and
some of the cases were scary enough to make you believe in the Devil, at
least while you were reading the novel. It turned out that there were
certain priests who cast out demons as a speciality. That was their job,
their market niche, waiting around like firemen for the alarm to go off.
Demon in Idaho housewife! Demon in Delaware bus driver! How weird was that?
As if being a priest weren’t strange enough already. Richard had been sort
of religious when he was young, he’d said prayers before meals and gone to
Sunday school, where he’d stuck cutouts of bearded men onto felt backdrops.
Church was fine; he’d always felt good afterwards. He could even see maybe
becoming religious again someday, when he was a lot older. But giving up
women? Never kissing a woman, never having a woman’s legs around you…
He sat up and reached for the glass of water Ana had left for him on the
bedside table. He’d knocked it over last weekend and made enough of a fuss
to wake her, but he didn’t think he should try that again, so he took care
picking it up and putting it down after he’d drunk his fill.
He settled back against the pillow. He closed his eyes, but just then Ana made
a little snort and moved beside him, giving off a fresh wave of warmth and,
faintly, that sweet warm bed-smell of hers, like baking bread, and he lay
there tensed, waiting, but she didn’t move again. He heard the clock tick,
his own breath returning, jagged and raspy.
He looked up towards the ceiling, at a thin bar of light leaking though the
shades from the street lamp outside. No more thinking about priests — that
didn’t help. Okay then, The Odyssey. He should read it again. He was going
to, for sure, this time in the grown-up version! He could get through a few
speeches and descriptions, sort of earn his way to the good parts,
especially the slaughter at the end. He liked the idea of Odysseus coming
home after all his wanderings and screw-ups and setting things right, taking
back his woman and his house, no discussion, no messing around.
Then he would read The Iliad. Also War and Peace and The Brothers Karamazov.
All the books that Ana had on her shelf and actually liked. Richard was an
economics major and didn’t have much time for outside reading, and when he
did he kicked back with a mystery or something scary. Okay, so he wasn’t a
big literary type — so sue him! He’d like to see one of those sensitive
souls handle the stuff he was dealing with in his International Environ-
mental Economics seminar. Abatement Strategy Modules. Alternative Equity
Criteria. General Equilibrium Impact Analyses. Go for it, he thought. Be my
f***ing guest.
Not that Ana was like that — a snob. She wasn’t. She really loved these books,
they were important to her, and Richard knew that he hadn’t been entirely
honest about his own tastes when they first met. He’d allowed her to think
that he was a great one for the classics, and she had believed him because
she had the idea that Columbia students were not only smart but cultured,
and that they went to the university not to set themselves up for a fat job
later on but to search for knowledge and wisdom. To become better people.
She was naive that way. Richard had liked her innocence, and the sense of
adult benevolence it gave him. She was a few years older than he, and at
first it sort of evened things out, him knowing the score while humouring
her, letting her have her notions.
That was how he saw it then, in the beginning. Not any more. After two months
with Ana, he knew himself to be the green, untested one. Her family was
Russian but they’d lived for many years in Chechnya, where her father
managed a food-processing plant. During the war, the factory had been
destroyed and Ana’s oldest brother had been killed. The family lost
everything. She’d been sent to live with her mother’s mother in Tel Aviv — a
widow, mean as a witch from some fairy tale. Now she was staying with an
aunt here in Queens and working illegally at a restaurant on Amsterdam. That
was where Richard had met her. He’d heard her speaking Russian to another
waitress, and when she came to his table he tried out a few phrases from his
one year of high-school Russian, and she had almost wept with surprise and
joy.
She wasn’t his type, Ana — a bit heavy, round in the face. Little pockmarks on
her forehead. Her English was pretty good but thickly accented. He hadn’t
meant to ask her out. But then he did, the very next night. A week later she
took him home, to this small attic room in her aunt’s house. They were just
having fun, that was how he’d seen it, the two of them having some fun
before going their separate ways, as people did, people their age with their
whole lives still ahead of them. You didn’t want to get tied down now, when
you didn’t know who you might still meet and what might open up, what
chances and adventures.
That was the idea. Some good times, no strings. But after a month or so he saw
that Ana had gone all serious on him. She tried to pretend she hadn’t, but
she had, and he knew it, and made up his mind to break things off. It would
be wrong to take advantage of her. Also the long subway ride from his dorm
and back was getting to him. But then he found that he couldn’t break it
off, because even with friends, even talking to other girls, he missed her,
missed her throaty voice and the strange, direct way she said things, missed
giving her pleasure and seeing it in her eyes.
He was desolate on the nights that he had to sleep in his dorm room.
Loud voices outside — men’s voices, speaking in Spanish. Ana shifted,
murmured. The voices moved on. Silence. Richard sat up and took another
drink of water.
Being away from her felt unnatural now. Alone in bed, sitting in class,
writing an e-mail to his parents, he thought of her and ached. But it
couldn’t last — he knew that. And he knew now that she would be the one to
break it off. Ana was already who she was going to be, and he was not. She
was a woman, and he was not a man. He looked like a man, even an interesting
man, dark and ruggedly handsome, with a grave, thoughtful air. But his looks
didn’t fit the way he felt — the way he knew himself to be. Sometimes,
walking down the street, he glanced at the window of a store and was thrown
by the sight of himself, as if he were wearing a costume.
Girls liked him. They assumed certain things about him, and he’d learnt to act
his part, but he knew this wouldn’t hold up much longer with Ana. Not
because she was older but because his ways of thinking were smaller than
hers. He wasn’t curious, as she was, didn’t like and trust others, as she
did, for all the hardships of her life.
He complained a lot, and she never complained. And though he hated being apart
from her, when they were out together he looked at other women and imagined
having them, and even brought their images to this bed. Sometimes she caught
him studying her coldly — wishing she’d lose weight, do something about
those pockmarks — and he could feel his own smallness and triviality as the
colour drained from her face.
Soon enough she would see him clearly, and understand her mistake. He was
already watching for signs of retreat: impatience, condescension, a certain
weariness. He’d seen all this before, with the only other girl he’d been
close to. Had Ana really not caught on yet? How could she not know? Was it
just because he was handsome and always ready? Or because he was American
and maybe of use in some scheme?
No! Ana didn’t think that way. And what sort of mean spirit, knowing her,
could even imagine such a thing? Jesus! What had got into him? Ana was a
noblewoman. Okay, that sounded like something from a book, but it was true.
It was just that she’d come to him too soon… She was the one he should have
met later, after he’d stuck his neck out and suffered some losses, after
he’d really messed things up, and been f***ed over, and got lost, and kept
going anyway — when this little green soul of his had taken some lumps and
some weather and bulked up into a man’s soul, so that he could look out of
his own eyes and not feel like a kid in a mask. Then he could have come to
her and strung the great bow, and laid waste to all these chicken-shit
doubts and wants, and claimed love as his right.
The bar of light on the ceiling paled away to nothing. Richard heard the
groaning of the pipes downstairs — the aunt was in the shower. A car
horn blared in the street below and Ana stirred, turned, moved against him.
He felt her hand on his hip. She whispered his name. He kept his eyes closed
and did not answer.
About this author
TOBIAS WOLFF is hailed as one of the great contemporary masters of the
short story. The American novelist, 63, has won the Rea Award and the
Pen/Malamud Award, both for excellence in the short story, the Los Angeles
Times Book Prize, and the Pen/Faulkner Award. Wolff is a professor of
literature and creative writing at Stanford University and lives in northern
California
Next week: Rachel Johnson The author of Notting Hell and Shire Hell —
and proud winner of the Bad Sex Award —writes a satirical tale about
the hell that Christmas can be
