Eight White Nights: A Novel PDF
Preview Eight White Nights: A Novel
ALSO BY ANDRÉ ACIMAN FICTION Call Me by Your Name NONFICTION The Light of New York (with Jean-Michel Berts) Out of Egypt: A Memoir False Papers: Essays on Exile and Memory Entrez: Signs of France (with Steven Rothfeld) AS EDITOR The Proust Project Letters of Transit: Reflections on Exile, Identity, Language, and Loss EIGHT WHITE NIGHTS EIGHT WHITE NIGHTS André Aciman FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX NEW YORK Farrar, Straus and Giroux 18 West 18th Street, New York 10011 Copyright © 2010 by André Aciman All rights reserved Distributed in Canada by D&M Publishers, Inc. Printed in the United States of America First edition, 2010 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Aciman, André. Eight white nights / André Aciman. — 1st ed. p. cm. ISBN 978-0-374-22842-2 (hardcover: alk. paper) I. Title. PS3601.C525 E54 2010 813'.6—dc22 2009025415 Designed by Jonathan D. Lippincott www.fsgbooks.com 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 I wish to thank Paul LeClerc, who gave me courage when I needed it most; the New York Public Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, for giving me a study for a whole year; Yaddo, for housing me during two glorious Junes; Jonathan Galassi, my editor; Lynn Nesbit, my agent; Cynthia Zarin, my friend—all of whom gave so much to this book. And, finally, my wife, Susan, who gave me roots, a home, a life, and all the love and blessings of family. For Philip, luz y dulzura Contents Cover Page Title Page Copyright Dedication First Night Second Night Third Night Fourth Night Fifth Night Sixth Night Seventh Night Eighth Night FIRST NIGHT H alfway through dinner, I knew I’d replay the whole evening in reverse— the bus, the snow, the walk up the tiny incline, the cathedral looming straight before me, the stranger in the elevator, the crowded large living room where candlelit faces beamed with laughter and premonition, the piano music, the singer with the throaty voice, the scent of pinewood everywhere as I wandered from room to room, thinking that perhaps I should have arrived much earlier tonight, or a bit later, or that I shouldn’t have come at all, the classic sepia etchings on the wall by the bathroom where a swinging door opened to a long corridor to private areas not intended for guests but took another turn toward the hallway and then, by miracle, led back into the same living room, where more people had gathered, and where, turning to me by the window where I thought I’d found a quiet spot behind the large Christmas tree, someone suddenly put out a hand and said, “I am Clara.” I am Clara, delivered in a flash, as the most obvious fact in the world, as though I’d known it all along, or should have known it, and, seeing I hadn’t acknowledged her, or perhaps was trying not to, she’d help me stop the pretense and put a face to a name everyone had surely mentioned many times before. In someone else, I am Clara would have sprung like a tentative conversation opener—meek, seemingly assertive, overly casual, distant, aired as an afterthought, the verbal equivalent of a handshake that has learned to convey firmness and vigor by overexerting an otherwise limp and lifeless grip. In a shy person, I am Clara would require so much effort that it might leave her drained and almost grateful when you failed to pick up the cue. Here, I am Clara was neither bold nor intrusive, but spoken with the practiced, wry smile of someone who had said it too many times to care how it broke the silence with strangers. Strained, indifferent, weary, and amused—at herself, at me, at life for making introductions the tense, self-conscious things they are—it slipped between us like a meaningless formality that had to be gotten over with, and now was as good a time as any, seeing that the two of us were standing away from those who had gathered in the middle of the room and who were about to start singing. Her words sprung on me like one of those gusts
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