It May All End in Aleppo

 

Adapted from Vladimir Nabokov's "That in Aleppo Once…" by Ali Mazalek

 

 

Husband

Wife

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Among other things, I must tell you that at last I am here, in the country whither so many sunset have led. I have a story for you. Which reminds me – I mean putting it like this reminds me – of the days when I wrote my first udder warm bubbling verse, and all things, a rose, a puddle, a lighted window, cried out to me: "I'm a rhyme!" Yes, this is a most useful universe. But just now I am not a poet. I come to you like that gushing lady in Chekhov who was dying to be described.

So I must tell you that I am back in Paris now. Back where it all began. Was it all a dream? Had we really left that poor dog here to die on its own? That beautiful setter that we had bought only a few weeks before… oh I still cry when I think of it! When I walk past the apartment, it all looks so familiar, yet somehow I cannot bring myself to venture in. Not now. Not ever again! But I will tell you how it happened. I will tell you everything right from the very beginning when we left behind that poor beautiful dog.

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I married, let me see, about a few weeks before the gentle Germans roared into Paris. It was love at first touch rather than at first sight, for I had met her several times before without experiencing any special emotions; but one night as I was seeing her home, something quaint she had said made me stoop with a laugh and kiss her on the hair – and of course we all know of that blinding blast… But now I cannot discern her. She remains as nebulous as my best poem. When I want to imagine her, I have to cling mentally to a tiny brown birthmark on her downy forearm…

I was much younger than he – a poet who had lured me in with his verse. On that night when he walked me home, his words caused a soundless and boundless expansion of what had been during my life but a small pinpoint of light in the center of my being. I suppose that really I had been solely attracted by the obscurity of his poetry; and then I tore a hole through its veil and saw a stranger's unlovable face. But that was not until much later, for we married quickly – only a few weeks before the Germans invaded. And soon after that we bought that adorable young setter.

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I had been for some time planning to follow the fortunate flight of so many of my friends. She described to me an uncle of hers who lived, she said, in New York. He had taught riding at a Southern college, and had wound up by marrying a wealthy American woman. They had a little daughter born deaf. She said she had lost their address, but a few days later it miraculously turned up, and we wrote a dramatic letter to which we never received any reply. But this did not much matter. I had already obtained a sound affidavit from Professor Lomchenko of Chicago; but that was all we had done to get the necessary papers when the invasion began.

He talked constantly of going to America… of his professor friend in Chicago who could help us. And I told him of my uncle in New York. He had taught riding at a Southern college, and had wound up marrying a wealthy American woman. Their little daughter had been born deaf. I was sure they could help us, and so we wrote a letter to which we received no reply. Of course only now do I know that they had by then moved to San Francisco. Their poor deaf little girl had died, and they could no longer bear to stay in New York. Our letter eventually made it to them, but the invasion began and we left Paris too quickly to receive their reply.

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So we started upon our disastrous honeymoon. Crushed and jolted amid the apocalyptic exodus, waiting for unscheduled trains that were bound for unknown destinations, we fled. Oh, she bore it gamely enough – with a kind of dazed cheerfulness. Once however, quite suddenly, she started to sob in a sympathetic railway carriage. "The dog," she said, "the dog we left. I cannot forget the poor dog." The honesty of her grief shocked me, as we had never had any dog. "I know," she said, "but I tried to imagine we had actually bought that setter." There had never been any talk of buying a setter.

And so the poor dog was left whining behind a locked door, and together we started on our catastrophic journey. We traveled by train from one nameless town to the next, and I watched the scenery blur past us. I cannot forget a certain stretch of highroad and the sight of a family of refugees – two women and a young child --whose old father, or grandfather, had died on the way. With a stick in their hands the women had tried to dig a roadside grave, but the soil was too hard.  They had given it up, and the little boy was still scratching and scraping and tugging alone…

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Spain proved too difficult and we decided to move on to Nice. At a place called Faugeres -- a ten-minute stop – I squeezed out of the train to buy some food. When a couple of minutes later I came back, the train was gone, and the muddled old man responsible for the atrocious void that faced me brutally told me that, anyway, I had had no right to get out. In a better world, I could have had my wife located and told what to do; as it was, my nightmare struggle with the telephone proved futile, so I took the next local to Montpellier.

The trains eventually took us to Spain, where he decided that after all we would be better off in France. So we boarded yet another train and headed back up the coast towards Nice. At a small town called Faugeres -- a rare ten-minute stop on the way -- he said he would get us some food. He got off the train, and that was the last I saw of him for almost a week. Tired and exhausted, I had been left alone on the train. I was sure that he had deserted me, sure that I would never find him again. But still I tried…

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Not finding her in Montpellier, I had to choose between two alternatives: going on because she might have boarded the Marseilles train which I had just missed, or going back because she might have returned to Faugeres. I forget now what tangle of reasoning led me to Marseilles and Nice.

At the next station, I got off the train and took another one back to Faugeres. Not finding him at the station there, I went on to the Commissariat where the French policemen proved to be of no help to me. Not knowing what to do next, I decided I would do best to move on to Nice, and so I boarded yet another train…

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Beyond such routine action as forwarding false data to a few unlikely places, the police did nothing to help. I looked up various acquaintances among the numerous Russians domiciled or stranded in Nice. A week after my arrival, an indolent plain-clothes man called upon me and took me down a crooked and smelly street to a black-stained house with the word "hotel" almost erased by dirt and time. There, he said, my wife had been found, but of course the girl he produced was an absolute stranger to me…

Somewhere around Marseilles, a young Frenchman joined me in my cabin. Finding me distraught, he listened patiently to my story and then tried to calm me down. He was the perfect gentleman and sympathetic to my plight. He offered me a place to stay in Nice, and having nowhere better to go, I accepted his offer. I stayed at his place for several nights and felt a strong attachment to him almost immediately. But then I ran into some Russian friends who told that my husband had arrived in Nice and was looking for me.

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When at length I got rid of that useless plain-clothes man and had wandered back to my neighborhood, I happened to pass by a compact queue waiting at the entrance of a food store. And there, at the very end, was my wife, straining on tiptoe to catch a glimpse of what exactly was being sold. I think the first thing she said to me was that she hoped it was oranges.

I wanted to find my husband again… to tell him everything that had happened and that I could no longer stay with him. I looked for him everywhere but couldn't even find where he was staying. Our friends in common all said they had seen him, but none of them knew where to find him. We finally ran into each other quite by accident outside a small French grocery store.

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Her tale seemed a trifle hazy, but perfectly banal. She said she had returned to Faugeres and gone straight to the Commissariat where she had to borrow some money to reach Nice. However she had gotten on the wrong train and had first traveled to an unknown town. Only two days ago had she finally arrived in Nice. Several days later, she retracted this story and instead claimed to have stayed for several nights in Montpellier with a man she had met on the train. The torture! I spent that night and many others getting it out of her bit by bit, but not getting it all. Until at last she said to me "I didn't – You will think me crazy, but I didn't!" Finally I had to accept the first version of her delay.

Although his tale seemed a trifle hazy, I was still willing to accept it. I had been so sure that he had deserted me, but his words convinced me otherwise. Yet by then it was too late. I told him my story and how the young Frenchman had stolen my heart. I implored him for a divorce – it would be better for both of us I said. But he refused, saying he would rather shoot both himself and me than sail to New York alone. In a similar situation, my father had acted like a gentleman, but all he said was that he did not give a hoot for my cocu de pere. It was then that his face became that of a stranger, and I knew I could no longer stay with him. I had to wait to find the right moment to leave…

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Between periods of this inquest, we were trying to get from reluctant authorities certain papers that were required for our visas. When at last I emerged from a dark hot office with a couple of plump visas cupped in my trembling hands, I dashed to Marseilles and managed to get tickets for the very next boat. I returned and tramped up the stairs. I saw a rose in a glass on the table – the sugar-pink of its obvious beauty, the parasitic air bubbles clinging to its stem. Her two spare dresses were gone, her comb was gone, her checkered coat was gone, and so was the mauve hair-band with a mauve bow that had been her hat. There was no note pinned to the pillow, and nothing at all in the room to enlighten me.

I spent several weeks not talking much to him, scared of what he would do. While he spent his days in the Prefecture filling forms and pleading with secretaries to secure our visas, I snuck out alone to see my beloved Frenchman. Together we planned our escape to a chateau in Lozere where we could be free and happy. When at last one day he emerged from the Prefecture clasping our visas, and then dashed off to Marseilles to get tickets for the boat, I hastily decided that the time had come for me to leave. I took with me my two spare dresses, my comb, my mauve hair-band, and my checkered coat, and once and for all I left that dismal apartment that had been the site of so much pain and suffering.

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I tried in vain to find her, but she had vanished without a trace. That was the end. I would have been a fool had I begun the nightmare business of searching and waiting for her all over again. On the fourth morning of a long and dismal sea voyage, I met on the deck a solemn but pleasant old doctor with whom I had played chess in Paris. He asked after my wife, and looked taken aback when I said I had sailed alone. He said he had seen her a couple of days before going on board. She had told him that I would presently join her with bag and tickets.

I wonder now how hard he tried to find me before finally giving up and sailing away on his own. I would have been a fool to go with him, yet I cannot stop thinking of him now. My beloved Frenchman turned out to be just as much of a stranger as he. The chateau in Lozere was little more than empty words, and I spent several weeks in a shabby little cottage in the country. After having spent so much time following others around, it took a while before I found the strength to take my life back into my own hands.

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This is, I gather, the point of the whole story. It was at that moment that I suddenly knew for certain that my wife had never existed at all. Here in New York, I looked for her uncle's name in the directory. It was not there. I went to the address she had given me once, but it proved to be an anonymous gap between two buildings. I now see our mangled romance engulfed in a deep valley of mist between the crags of two matter-of-fact mountains: life had been real before, and life will be real from now on. Yet the pity of it! I am hideously unhappy. She keeps on walking to and fro where the brown nets are spread to dry on the hot stone slabs. Somewhere, somehow, I have made some fatal mistake. It may all end in Aleppo if I am not careful.

I eventually found myself back in Nice and couldn't help inquiring about my husband. He was gone… our friends said he had sailed to America alone. And although I couldn't keep myself from thinking about him and wondering what would have happened if we had sailed together, I knew that this end would be a beginning for me. Like a puzzle, the pieces of my life finally started to fall into place. I returned to Paris, and the nice lady at the post-office gave me a letter from my uncle. He is living in San Francisco now, together with his lovely wife. Perhaps I will go join him, and from this point on my life will once again be real. I will not let our distorted romance torture me anymore, or it may all end in Aleppo if I am not careful.