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A Novel
by Nicole Krauss
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Naturally Paul had thought of me when he'd woken up, because
when we were sophomores in college we'd met in a seminar on
avant-garde poets. We'd become friends because we always agreed
with each other in class, while everyone else disagreed with us,
more and more vehemently as the semester progressed, and with
time an alliance had formed between Paul and me that after all
these years - five - could still be unfolded and inflated instantly.
He asked how I was, alluding to the breakup, which someone must
have told him about. I said I was ok except that I thought maybe my
hair was falling out. I also told him that along with the piano, the
sofa, chairs, bed, and even the silverware had gone with R, since
when I met him I'd been living more or less out of a suitcase, whereas
he had been like a sitting Buddha surrounded by all of the furniture
he'd inherited from his mother. Paul said he thought he might
know someone, a poet, a friend of a friend, who was going back to
Chile and might need a foster home for his furniture. A phone call
was made and it was confirmed that the poet, Daniel Varsky, did
indeed have some items he didn't know what to do with, not wanting
to sell them in case he changed his mind and decided to return to
New York. Paul gave me his number and said Daniel was expecting
me to get in touch. I put off making the call for a few days, mostly
because there was something awkward about asking a stranger for his
furniture even if the way had already been paved, and also because
in the month since R and all of his many belongings had gone I'd
become accustomed to having nothing. Problems only arose when
someone else came over and I would see, reflected in the look on
my guest's face, that from the outside the conditions, my conditions,
Your Honor, appeared pathetic.
When I finally called Daniel Varsky he picked up after one ring.
There was a cautiousness in that initial greeting, before he knew
who it was on the other end, that I later came to associate with
Daniel Varsky, and with Chileans, few as I've met, in general. It
took a minute for him to sort out who I was, a minute for the light
to go on revealing me as a friend of a friend and not some loopy
woman calling - about his furniture? she'd heard he wanted to get
rid of it? or just give it out on loan? - a minute in which I considered
apologizing, hanging up, and carrying on as I had been, with
just a mattress, plastic utensils, and the one chair. But once the light
had gone on (Aha! Of course! Sorry! It's all waiting right here for
you) his voice softened and became louder at the same time, giving
way to an expansiveness I also came to associate with Daniel
Varsky and, by extension, everyone who hails from that dagger pointing
at the heart of Antarctica, as Henry Kissinger once called it.
He lived all the way uptown, on the corner of 99th Street and
Central Park West. On the way, I stopped to visit my grandmother,
who lived in a nursing home on West End Avenue. She no longer recognized
me, but once I'd gotten over this I found myself able to enjoy
being with her. We normally sat and discussed the weather in eight
or nine different ways, before moving on to my grandfather, who
a decade after his death continued to be a subject of fascination to
her, as if with each year of his absence his life, or their life together,
became more of an enigma to her. She liked to sit on the sofa marveling
at the lobby - All of this belongs to me? she'd periodically ask,
waving in a gesture that took in the whole place - and wearing all
of her jewelry at once. Whenever I came, I brought her a chocolate
babkah from Zabar's. She always ate a little out of politeness, and the
cake would flake onto her lap and stick to her lips, and after I left she
gave the rest away to the nurses.
When I got to 99th Street, Daniel Varsky buzzed me in. As I
waited for the elevator in the dingy lobby it occurred to me that
I might not like his furniture, that it might be dark or otherwise
oppressive, and that it would be too late to back out gracefully. But
on the contrary, when he opened the door my first impression was
of light, so much so that I had to squint, and for a moment I couldn't
see his face because it was in silhouette. There was also the smell
of something cooking which later turned out to be an eggplant dish
he'd learned to make in Israel. Once my eyes adjusted I was surprised
to find that Daniel Varsky was young. I'd expected someone
older since Paul had said his friend was a poet, and though we both
wrote poetry, or tried to write it, we made a point of never referring
to ourselves as poets, a term we reserved for those whose work had
been judged worthy of publication, not just in an obscure journal or
two, but in an actual book that could be purchased in a bookstore.
In retrospect this turns out to have been an embarrassingly conventional
definition of a poet, and though Paul and I and others we
knew prided ourselves on our literary sophistication, in those days
we were still walking around with our ambition intact and in certain
ways it blinded us.
Reprinted from Great House: A Novel by Nicole Krauss Copyright (c) 2010 by Nicole Krauss. Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
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