Suddenly, he stopped asking and went
silent. As I expected, he had not figured
that so many years could go by and still
leave me attached to someone who had
become an invisible presence.
“It belongs to the past,” I said, trying
to make amends.
“Nothing belongs to the past.” But
then he right away asked: “You still think
of him, don’t you?”
I nodded because I did not want to say
yes.
“Do you miss him?”
“When I am alone—sometimes, yes.But it doesn’t intrude, doesn’t make
me sad. I can go entire weeks without
thinking of him. Sometimes I want to
tell him things, but then I put it off, and
even telling myself that I’m putting it off
gives me some pleasure, though we may
never speak. He taught me everything.
My father said there were no taboos in
bed; my lover helped me cast them off.
He was my first.”
Michel shook his head with a confid-
ing smile that reassured me. “How many
after him?” he asked.
“Not many. All short-lived. Men and
women.”
“Why?”
“Maybe because I never really let go orlose myself with others. After an instant
of passion, I always fall back to being the
autonomous me.”
He took a last sip of his coffee.
“At some point in your life you willneed to call him. The moment will come.
It always does. But perhaps I shouldn’t be
saying all this.”
“Why?”
“Oh, you know why.”
I liked what he’d just said, but it leftus both silent.
“The autonomous you, then,” he fi-
nally said, obviously eliding what had just
transpired between us that very second.
“Difficult, aren’t you?”
“My father used to say so as well, be-
cause I could never decide on anything,
what to do in life, where to live, what
to study, whom to love. Stick to music
he said. Sooner or later, the rest would
come. He started his career at the age of
32—so I still have some time, though not
much, if I’m to time myself to his clock.
We’ve been exceptionally close, ever
since I was a baby. He was a philologist
and writing his dissertation at home
while my mother was a therapist in a
hospital, so he was the one in charge of
diapers and all the rest. We had help but
I was always with him. He’s the one who
taught me to love music—ironically, the
very same piece I was teaching when you
walked in this afternoon. When I teach it
I still hear his voice.”
“My father too taught me music. I was
just a bad student.”
I liked this sudden convergence of
coincidences though I was reluctant to
make too much of it either. He kept star-
ing at me without saying anything. But
then he said something that caught me
off guard once again: “You are so hand-
some.” It had come totally unprompted,
so that rather than react to his words, I
found myself trying to change the sub-
ject, except that in doing so I heard myself
mutter something more unprompted yet.
“You make me nervous.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because I
don’t really know what you’re after, or
where you’d want me to stop and not
go further.”
“Should be very clear by now. If any-
thing I’m the one who should be nervous.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m probably just a whim for
you, or maybe a few rungs higher than
an occasional.”
I scoffed at this.
“And by the way”—I hesitated before
saying it but felt impelled to say it—“I’m
not very good at beginnings.”
He chuckled. “Was this thrown in for
my benefit?”
“Maybe.”“Well, but to come back to what I was
saying: You are unbelievably handsome.
And the problem is either that you know
it and are aware of its power over others
or that you need to pretend not to—which
makes you not just difficult to decipher
but, for someone like me, dangerous.”
All I did was nod listlessly. I didn’t want
him to feel that what he’d just told me was
misplaced. So I stared at him, smiled, and
in another setting would have touched his
eyelids before kissing them both.
As it got darker, the lights of our café
and of the adjoining one were lit. They
cast a luminous, unsteady glow on his fea-
tures, and for the first time, I was aware
of his lips, his forehead, and his eyes. He’s
the handsome one, I thought. I should
have said so, and the moment was ripe
for it. But I kept quiet. I did not want to
echo his words; it would have sounded
like a strained and contrived attempt to
establish parity between us. But I did love
his eyes. And he was still staring at me.
“You remind me of my son,” he finally
said.
“Do we look alike?”
“No, but you’re the same age. He too
loved classical music. So I used to take him
to the Sunday evening concerts, the way
my father had so often done with me.”
“Do you still go together?”
“No. He lives in Sweden, mostly.”
“But the two of you are close?”
“I wish. My divorce with his mother ru-
ined things between us, though I’m sure
she did nothing to hurt our relationship.
But he knew about me of course and, I
suppose, never forgave me. Or he used
it as an excuse to turn against me, which
he’d been wanting to do since his early
20s, God knows why.”
“How did they find out?”
“She did first. One early evening she
walked in and found me listening to slow
jazz and nursing a drink. I was alone and
just by watching me and the look on my
face she knew right away that I was in love.
Classic feminine intuition! She put down
her handbag by the coffee table, sat next to
me on the sofa, and even reached out and
had a sip of my drink: ‘Is she someone I
know?’ she asked after a long, long silence.
I knew exactly what she meant and there
was no point denying it. ‘It’s not a she,’
I replied. ‘Ah,’ she said. I still remember
the last remnants of sunlight on the carpet
and against the furniture, the smoky smell
of my whiskey, and the cat lying next to
me. Sunlight, when I see it in my livingAs I expected, he
had not figured that
so many years
could go by
and still leave me
attached
to someone who
had become an
invisible presence.”
DECEMBER 2019 VANITY FAIR 107