You know what romei means, right? Pilgrims whose destination is Rome?
He hadn’t read his footnotes, apparently. I explained.
Romei sees himself as one of Dante’s pilgrims? Benny asked. That most nihilistic of writers thinks he has a journey to make toward a redemptive end?
That’s what he thought when he moved to Rome and named himself.
Whoa, Benny said. I had no idea. What was my point?
Least Jewish book you’d ever read.
Right! We don’t have that straight line.
We? I asked.
We Jews, Benny said. Or is it us Jews?
It’s you Jews, remember? I don’t count.
I Jews, then. I Jews got the spiral. Moses never made it to the Promised Land.
You’re not making sense, I said. What’s the spiral?
I’m getting sleepy.
Oh, no! Tell me about the spiral!
Benny pretended to snore, honking into the receiver like a cartoon pig.
You’re thinking of Yeats’ gyre? I asked. His spiral staircase? Nietzsche’s theory of eternal return? They weren’t Jewish. Freud’s return of the repressed?
I want you to tell me a spiral story, Benny said. Otherwise I’m going to bed.
Oh, no! I said. Stay up with me and talk about narrative line!
What good are you? Benny mumbled.
G’night then, I said.
Don’t let the bedbugs bite.
You’re not going to make me get off first, are you? I said, and we agreed to hang up on the count of three. I smiled into my pillow. But sleep? No. I was thinking about straight lines and spirals, exiles and pilgrims, redemption within reach and ever deferred. Were there any pilgrims left, I wondered, journeying with confidence toward a happily ever after? Weren’t we all homebodies now, couch potatoes eschewing narrative? I had been, till I heard Romei’s irresistible call. Or maybe we were exiles, as Benny said, running from chapter to chapter, chasing an endless spiral (which went where, exactly?). Or refugees pushed by plot points out of our comfy chairs, no noble destination except away-from-here?
What would that narrative look like, I wondered — the narrative of the passive, the buffeted, the confused? Not heroic. I thought of the irony of Dante-the-homebody writing about a pilgrimage of the soul in Vita Nuova, then Dante-the-exile a few years later, pushed out of Florence, writing about Dante-the-pilgrim in the Comedy. The irony, too, of Romei the exile turning to heroic narrative.
There would be no sleep tonight. I put my father’s bathrobe on and set some water to boil. Then returned to the study with some PT. It was three in the morning and I was sipping tea, my hair a fright about my head, taking notes about Dante’s straight line to salvation, his meaningful march toward The End, that great resolution in the sky — and checking lines, first one, then another — and why not begin at the beginning? Next thing I knew, I was reading the thing. The dreaded Vita Nuova.
You know what? I didn’t collapse. Dante’s libello didn’t reach its razor edges into my soft, my throbbing heart. I wasn’t overcome by memories — of T., of romantic failure, the loss of love. I didn’t think of the past at all. I thought about Romei’s work, excited to get to it.
Go figure.
Tink, balanced on my pyramid of books, just stared at me.
I told you so, he seemed to say.
13. TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES
On Monday, I was putting away laundry and explaining to SuperTemps that an opportunity had arisen that required me to suspend relations with their fine establishment — temporarily, that is, till Y2K — when I heard the low hum-whir of the fax across the apartment. Anon! It had arrived! I did a little dance, right there in front of the linen cabinet, something between a hora and the pogo.
You sure the aliens aren’t making you queen of Venus? Durlene asked.
They haven’t been in touch, I said.
If so, I’ll have to leave you to it.
No need to leave me to it, I said.
My best bookkeeper is waiting for the Second Coming in a potato field, she said.
Silence from the study. Paper jam? I dropped a stack of tea towels back into the laundry basket and brought the phone to the fax.
You sign with someone else? Durlene asked. What did they offer? We’ll match their rate, more or less.
I lifted the pages from the tray. Ten pages, numbered in fine European lettering. The A4 size, slightly longer, more narrow than our standard letter. Strange in my hand, that unfamiliar shape.
Ten pages, there were no more.
I got a job through a friend, I said, jerking open the paper tray and checking for jams.
A friend, Durlene said. Is that a euphemism for competitor?
I’d never sign with anyone else, I said. Now as to the question of my hourly rate …
Ten pages? Maybe Romei was having technical difficulties. Maybe I was having technical difficulties. I unplugged the fax, plugged it in again.
Shira? Are you there? Mr. Ferguson was quite upset.
Why?
You quit without notice! Durlene said. Look, I’m authorized to offer you an additional twenty-five cents an hour.
The fax whirred and hummed but there were no more pages. I plopped onto the velveteen loveseat, pages on my lap.
Fifty cents, Durlene said. That’s my final offer.
•
Ten pages. I didn’t know what to make of that.
I put a Pop Tart in the toaster, then went to visit the Flying Girl.
The Flying Girl was Ahmad’s most treasured possession, drawn by Jonah the day he died. I often snuck into the studio to see her. She flew above a light-soaked table, in a drawing of Jonah’s mother pointing (with a chicken bone) at a childlike me, floating over his mother’s head like an angeclass="underline" fourteen-year-old Shira leaping for a volleyball.
I’d immortalized Jonah’s drawing of the flying girl in “Tibet, New York,” a story I wrote about Jonah’s last weekend.
I don’t understand, I said, sitting cross-legged before her like a devotee. Is Romei testing me? He’s in an almighty hurry, but he only sends ten pages? Am I translating on spec?
Sometimes the Flying Girl spoke cryptically; today she just said, You’re dropping crumbs! Ahmad won’t like that!
Oops.
Have you looked at the pages? she asked.
Not exactly, I said.
You’re fearful, she said.
Never!
You know I’m right.
I knew she was right.
I needed courage. Because now that the pages were here, it was obvious: I would fail. I’d be revealed as the dilettante, the fraud I knew myself to be — an unworthy, pretending to be People of the Book. Romei would find someone else — a poet, someone with a track record. His former translators — a dashing Poet Laureate, a fashionable translator of literary theory — were dead, but surely they’d been survived by folks more qualified than I!
Normally I could turn to Ahmad for a pick-me-up. He’d understand. But he was cranky, for some reason, on the subject of Romei: I wasn’t in the mood for another lecture about the UN. My best girlfriend Jeanette should have been good for a pep talk, but she wasn’t talking to me.
Look out the window, the Flying Girl said. Your answer’s right there.
Benny? I whispered.
Silly rabbit! she said. Go!
14. SECOND COMING
It had been two and a half decades since I was lyricist for the proto-punk band Gory Days (What’s behind Door Number Two? It had better not be you, you, you!). In our Den of Propinquity, we listened to qawwali and Raffi, but sometimes when I was alone I played the band’s one cassette — the relentlessly pornographic Second and Third Coming—tapping my tambourine ironically against my thigh. When I entered People of the Book, and heard that Benny’s raga had been replaced by a grunge band I didn’t recognize, I felt old. I also felt like pulling my ear drums out with my fingernails.