“It tastes like rabbit,” she says, sucking on the bone. She insists it has a gamey taste.
“You’re out of your mind to come like this,” he says suddenly. “It’s the kind of recklessness...” Taking little sips of wine, she listens to him rage. “You wouldn’t have liked me when you were twenty,” he pursues, “at twenty a woman like you wants a man like Ezra Blind. They all do.” He spits out the last words and draws her into his arms with sudden fury. Such a violent kiss. It’s bestial. They are staggering backwards, as in a love scene from an old silent movie.
“What do you expect?” he says smiling, and they both realize that they are dreaming. She doesn’t care; it’s her only chance. They are flying high over the city.
It’s day, the smell of snow in the air, a winter sky of long ago. Children are skating on the frozen river. She can see the pure bright colors of their mufflers and knitted caps. They soar upward, high up into the blue cloudless sky. He is going to fly straight into the sun. Blinded, she searches for his mouth—just once more. But she too has realized that everything has become pointless.
“...just want to tell you quick before the dream ends, I’m on my way. Coming. With Lufthansa, Air France, Icelandic...”
•
She arrived at Idlewild airport early in the morning. The plane was on time. With only one suitcase she passed quickly through customs. Still half asleep—it was best so. Heading toward the exit she thought she caught a glimpse of him standing right by the door in white pants, the familiar striped polo shirt over wide shoulders, caught brief glances of the long torso, the sullen mouth, the heavy jaw. Keeping a serene face against the strain of a suitcase and six bottles of duty-free whiskey pulling at each hand, and her own growing excitement, she advanced still looking straight ahead. Turning her head slowly toward him only after she passed through the door. It was not Ivan. A gross imitation, she noted uneasily; only the crudest resemblance. She looked around but did not see him in the lobby. She watched the crowd thin; the last passengers met. He was not coming: the numbing thought dawned on her with each passing second; she wouldn’t go out through the glass doors and on to Manhattan. She hadn’t arrived. Another woman stood in the lobby, still clutching passport and customs papers—or was it possible that they hadn’t recognized each other? She looked around again. The young man in the polo shirt still stood by the door, leaning against the wall. It wasn’t Ivan. Her memory couldn’t be totally false. Besides, neither his posture nor his expression showed expectancy. There he stood, wide-shouldered and expressionless, staring into space; she was just about to take a step toward him when she was embraced from behind. Ivan spoke her name. She turned in his arms and looked into his face.
“You’re here. You really came,” he said, hugging her. “How do you feel?”
“Not quite down here,” she laughed weakly and looked at him, amazed. “It’s really you,” she kept repeating dumbly.
“I saw your plane fly in,” he told her. “I’ve been here since three in the morning up at the observation tower—I couldn’t sleep. It was beautiful to watch the first jets streaking out. I expected you on an earlier plane—I don’t know why. I was so impatient. I didn’t believe you’d really come.”
It was so strange sitting beside him in the big black car on winding thruways, past supermarkets and brick towers. It was the first time she had seen him in a dark suit. He told her how he had borrowed the car from his grandmother and driven it down from Providence. Every so often they looked at each other and smiled. His look softened and the corners of his mouth turned infinitesimally up. Her face felt like a fragile papier-mâché mask behind which her eyes slid furtively from the skyline to his hand on the steering wheel. It was all so strange. It would have been easier if she could have been delivered in a crate. Of course she didn’t believe it. There was something she had to tell him. But she couldn’t in the car, not just after he had said, “I’m kidnapping you.” She could not tell him when they got out, standing briefly on the Manhattan pavement with a side glimpse of the fogged Jersey shore. In the elevator, held in his arms, she could not speak at all.
In his room the sight of all the familiar objects filled her with such gladness, suddenly she felt completely at home, alive, completely awake. Even if she was here by mistake, she thought. Especially if she was here by mistake—
She looked at him coming toward her naked.
“I tried to write you.”
“I know,” he said, opening her blouse, “I know.”
They smiled at each other curiously as they lay down.
“You have invented me,” she joked in the middle of the night.
“No, you have invented me,” he replied, a trace of sadness in his voice that made her silent.
“Arrivals are always unreal,” he comforted her and put on the light. “Angst,” he said after studying her face. The German sounded funny from his mouth. “You can tell me. It wouldn’t be natural if we were always happy. Are you sad because you came? Because of Ezra?”
She shook her head, trying to smile. “Tell me all the German words you know.”
“Geist. Blitzkrieg. Heldentenor. Liebestod. Lebensraum. Sauerkraut. Blut und Boden. Ewig Weibliches. Weltschmerz. Kaputt. Angst. We’ll make coffee and read. You can’t tell me?”
“It will pass,” she said, getting up. “I’ll take a shower.”
“Here,” he said, and winding her in a big white towel, held her. “I don’t know if I can let you. Promise you won’t disappear.”
Crying under the shower, she has never been naked like this. Had she really intended to tell him at the airport? Tell him what? That she is
