Eight White Nights: A Novel

338 Pages·2010·1.54 MB·English

by  André Aciman

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