The Invention of Ana Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  I

  I heard the first of her stories one spring evening on a Brooklyn rooftop. I was interning at an art festival back then, newly arrived and hungry for the city, fancying I belonged in the art world, and because I was keen to rub shoulders with artists, I found myself on the roof of the exhibition space that evening, listening to her tell me she had a quarter in her shoe. She’d made up her mind to walk around with the coin until she dreamed about it. It had been in there two weeks, she explained. She wanted America beneath her skin, but all she’d gotten were a few ugly blisters, and she hadn’t even dreamed about the coin yet.

  I wished her luck with the project, we clinked glasses, and she introduced herself as Ana Ivan. When I asked where she was from, she said Bucharest, telling me about where she grew up and about Ceaușescu’s rationing in the eighties, when only every fifth streetlamp was lit and the television broadcast programs for just two hours a day.

  Oh sure, Romania, I said. Things were pretty bad back then?

  Ana shrugged. They never went hungry, but there was no electricity, and she remembered the long, dark evenings in the apartment, the afternoons when there was so little to do that she was reduced to padding out the hours with daydreams. Sometimes she sat in front of the blank television and imagined the cartoons she’d seen, rearranging them into new combinations. Other times she played a game with her father: They put a blank piece of paper on the table, shut their eyes, and let a pen fall on the sheet at random. A dot here and a dot there, until there were a few handfuls of them. Then they sat together and stared at the dots, looking for figures or patterns, or patterns that looked like figures, and when they’d agreed on one they joined up the dots to make a picture emerge. They drew lines between the dots to make an elephant or a flower or a snail’s shell, and sooner or later her father always threw open his arms and said, Ah, Ana, just imagine! This is how the world hangs together, everything we see just a few tiny flecks in space. He said it every time—not, in that sense, an inventive man. What d’you make of that, then? he would say. Most of what we see is nothing but empty space. It’s just the distance between atoms, sheer nothingness. And then Ana would pick up the pen and ask, So is this nothing? and her father would say, No, sweetheart, that’s atoms and nothing, and it was all true, a nice edifying game they continued to play until one day Ana went on a school trip. She was in the second or third year, she told me—it must have been in the mid-eighties, because Ceaușescu’s palace was still a forest of scaffolding growing out of the hillside into the center of town—and the teacher was shepherding the children toward the building site, pointing at the cranes and diggers and asking, So, can anybody tell me what that is? Yes, said Ana, It’s nothing. Nothing, said the schoolteacher, what do you mean by that? That’s what my dad says. It’s sheer nothingness. Ana’s father was summoned for a conversation. He had to explain and smooth things over, and if Ana was to be believed, he was lucky not to lose his job or his front teeth, because after that episode all the family’s letters were steamed open, the Securitate kept coming to visit, and the neighbors listened in on the telephone line.

  Join up the dots, said Ana, when she’d finished her story. Know what I mean?

  I nodded as if I’d seen or construed or guessed what she meant, because back then everything was simpler. Ana talked and I listened, and what did it matter to me whether she talked about her father or her school trips? Ana was an artist, and in my eyes that made her worth listening to.

  As I remember it, it was the first warm day of spring. I’d gotten there early to set up tables, leaning against the banister as I watched the guests come up the stairs, some of them pausing a moment and blinking as they emerged into the sunlight and the scent of the river that hung above the city that day, as if they’d forgotten why they were hurrying or what came after the short, endless days of winter. A train clattered over the Manhattan Bridge above us, down from the street came the bleating of a truck’s horn, and around me the guests were chattering away. I wanted to hear what they were saying, but I didn’t know them, and wasn’t sure how to introduce myself. So I went to the bar instead, got a glass of wine, and stared at the island across the river, where thousands of people were swarming out of the towers onto the streets, full of thoughts and dreams I knew nothing about but which would soon be opened to me. That’s the way I thought back then. I’d be dissolved into the city, and with a lightness in my chest I stared at the shiny panes of glass and the people behind them, people who’d soon be sharing in my memories, when a woman stepped away from the bar and gave me her hand.

  She was pale and short, very short, with a black dress and dark hair gathered in a bun, about five or ten years older than me. She had a peculiar face, her eyes brown and inquisitive, and a smile on her lips as if my whole existence was a joke and she was waiting for the punch line.

  Are you working at the festival? she asked.

  Yes, I said. My brother’s one of the organizers.

  I asked if she was an artist, and what work she had in the show. Ana must have misunderstood me, or perhaps she just ignored my question, because she launched into the anecdote about the coin in her shoe, and after telling me the story of the school trip and the game with the dots she asked why I’d moved to New York.

  Well, my brother works for the festival, I said. And he got me—

  Yeah, you said that. But why are you really here?

  What do you mean?

  I mean you didn’t travel all the way across the Atlantic to be an intern. You want something—to get rich or hunt bison or whatever.

  I laughed. Well, I’m definitely not here to hunt bison.

  Judging by that moth-eaten shirt, she said, I’d guess you want to be an intellectual of some kind. An academic or a poet or something.

  None of the above, I said. Well, sort of—I write sometimes. Stories, I guess you’d call them. Short fiction and articles and stuff like that.

  So you’re a writer?

  I wouldn’t put it quite like that. I haven’t published much.

  Yeah, well, that’s publishing, she sighed. It’s not for kids.

  Then we clinked glasses and she told me about a friend who was an editor at an imprint or literary magazine or self-publishing group; I don’t remember exactly because at that moment I lifted my eyes and caught sight of my brother. Surrounded by a ring of well-dressed people, he was explaining the concept behind the exhibition. I could see it in the way he moved his hands, brandishing them in swelling gestures like a priest or a shaman or a witch doctor, summoning the spirits of the festival. Ana paused, as if she could tell my attention had shifted.

  Sorry, I said, smiling. Back in a minute.

  When I reached my brother he’d finished his monologue, and there was a chorus of laughter.

  I see you’ve met our Romanian friend, he said with a nod toward Ana. Great, isn’t she?

  Absolutely, I said. She seems—she’s quite something.

  Mm, he said. Otherwise she wouldn’t be here.

  Around us the party atmosphere was gradually beginning to wane. The cheerful voices and the buzz of free alcohol were devolving into drunken, whiny drivel. It had reached that point in the evening when all the dull clichés began to surface: an artist’s hand creeping up an intern’s thigh, the gallerist pedantically bossing the caterers about. I remember that my brother took his time pointing out a few of the guests—an Egyptian curator, a German journalist—and before we disappeared into the night I
had one last glimpse of Ana. She was bending over her watch with an expression of concentration, but I can’t remember if we said goodbye.

  And what if we did?

  Back then it made no difference. Ana was just a woman I met at a reception, one artist out of hundreds, nothing more. I didn’t even glance over my shoulder.

  A week went by before I saw her again. The following Thursday I was walking down the corridor after a lecture, going to deposit the money we’d taken at the door, and as I passed through the cavernous exhibition space I noticed the lights were on in the office. It was late, about eleven or twelve at night, and I’d expected to find the building in darkness, but coming from the back room I could hear an almost childish laugh and detect the faint aroma of fresh pastries, and when I turned the corner I saw Ana sitting at the desk, bathed in the blue light of the computer screen. She was video-chatting, wearing the same dress as she had at the launch party, or one exactly like it, but this time she had no makeup on and her face was somehow softer.

  Oddly enough, it made me shy. Or not shy, exactly, but hesitant, and for a moment I stood by the doorframe, wondering whether to leave. I don’t know what came over me. I didn’t want to intrude, I guess, didn’t want to be pushy, or maybe my hesitation was more intuitive, as if something inside me knew I should keep my distance. I’d only met Ana once, and although I was charmed by the coin in her shoe and the little stories she told, I felt there was something about her I couldn’t trust. I wasn’t able to put my finger on what it was, but there was something in the air around her, something disquieting that I didn’t understand. Then again, I’d just arrived in town and there were lots of things I didn’t understand, so I continued into the room, nodding to Ana and locking the cashbox into the cabinet.

  Well, if it isn’t the intern, she said, closing the computer. What are you doing here so late?

  I’ve just come from the lecture, I answered.

  Oh right, the lecture. Of course.

  What about you?

  She tapped the black notebook that lay open on the table in front of her. I was going to make an entry in my logbook, she said. But then my mom called.

  A logbook? I said. What’s that all about?

  You know, notes and coordinates and stuff like that.

  She gave a brief smile but changed the subject, asking if I knew anywhere to get a decent pair of jeans. I recommended a few stores, but they were closed, of course, at this hour. Ana wasn’t pleased.

  Isn’t this supposed to be the city that never sleeps? Even Bucharest has more going on than here.

  I smiled. Can’t it wait until tomorrow? They’ll probably be open at ten.

  Ten, she snorted. I’ll only just have gone to bed.

  No, no—ten in the morning.

  Yeah. I’ll only just have gone to bed.

  I looked at her, unable to tell whether she was joking or had misunderstood me. Or maybe she was working on a schedule all her own. I asked: So you always work really late at night?

  Yeah, you know, because of the time-traveling.

  She said it completely naturally, as if she were talking about laundry or picking up a child from school.

  Time-traveling?

  Yeah. You haven’t heard about that?

  No, I mean—what? You travel through time?

  Sure. I can show you another time, but right now I’m dying for something to eat. Want to get breakfast?

  I could have said no. I could have told her I was busy, that it was too late, that I was tired and half-dead on my feet, but those would have been lies. The truth was I was brimming with energy, and even though there was something disquieting about Ana, she was also clever and funny, and I hadn’t come to New York to turn down invitations for midnight snacks. I told her I’d be happy to, so we packed up our things, locked the door, and walked out into the city together. We ended up at a diner not far from the exhibition space, where we sat and talked about the service in America, so much better than in Europe, friendly yet ill-mannered in its own extravagant way. Ana told me about the restaurant-less part of Bucharest she’d grown up in, and I told her about my girlfriend Lærke, who waitressed at an all-night restaurant in Copenhagen and was going to move over here as soon as she’d finished her degree.

  That’s so sweet, said Ana. So sweet and young and innocent. I’m amazed you dared go out with someone like me.

  What do you mean?

  Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to go out with Eastern Europeans? To toss a pinch of salt over your shoulder when there are Romanians around?

  No, I said with a smile. I haven’t heard that one.

  Ah, well, we bring bad luck, you see. We’re like a litter of black cats.

  To illustrate her point, she told me about the apartment she was living in. She’d inherited it from an old friend of her father’s, Paul Pintea, a Romanian mathematician who’d been a professor at Cluj university until the late nineties. When the reforms were implemented he was sacked, and to make matters worse his wife was diagnosed with a serious kidney disorder. In desperation, unable to afford dialysis or find a new job, the professor had entered the Green Card Lottery, and ended up winning, of course. As soon as the paperwork came through, he packed his bags and traveled to New York, but if the venerable mathematician had thought that jobs hung on trees here he’d been very much mistaken. He had to settle for work as a cleaner, plus a menial job on the side as a night attendant at a laundromat out in Sunnyside. The pittance he sent home was barely enough to cover the cost of his wife’s dialysis, and soon he took to drink, falling into a deep depression. Oh, nothing but pain and drudgery all around, and after they’d been stewing in their misery for a few years, the wife succumbed to her illness. Six months later it was the mathematician’s turn: he keeled over on the downtown R train, struck down by a blood clot in the lung or somewhere.

  So there you go, said Ana. I’m living in the ruins of someone else’s life.

  Sounds like a horror movie, I said. Aren’t you afraid he’ll come back?

  Come back?

  Yeah. Paul, I mean. Aren’t you afraid he’ll return and start haunting you?

  She had a lovely laugh, bubbly and forthright. I wish he would, she said, so I can give him a good slap.

  At that moment the waitress arrived to take our order. I only had enough money for coffee, but Ana ordered pancakes, and before long we were talking about ready-made cake mix and Dr. Oetker. We talked about Dr. Oetker the individual, August Oetker Junior, who was apparently a big art collector, and about Dr. Oetker’s product packaging, which darkened the farther south you got in Europe: cream in Denmark, yellow in Germany, scarlet in Serbia, and a sort of coffee-brown in Spain. Ana chatted and chatted, just nipping at the food, so I ate the rest while she talked. Slowly she cleared the table in front of her. First she moved the plate, then the coffee cup and sugar dispenser, the napkins and the bottle of ketchup. It was like she wanted space to talk. Her hands worked as she told me about her unlucky countrymen, about the accidents that struck both friends and relatives, and about the two minutes she’d been dead.

  Sorry, what? I said. The two minutes you what?

  Mm, were dead.

  I didn’t know what to say. Must be some kind of joke, I thought, but Ana seemed serious enough, and I remember very clearly her reaching for the coffee cup, kneading it between her hands, her eyes fixed on the bottom as if reading the grounds. Ana sat there and told me about 1989, the terrible year that had changed her life in so many ways. It had begun innocently on New Year’s morning, as she stood on a milk crate and read aloud from Ceaușescu’s speech. The other kids had cheered and yelled hurrah, and the local grocer smiled nervously as he watched Ana ape the Great Winter Shoemaker’s gestures. She spoke with the same drawling rhythms and made the same spastic motions with her hands as the People’s President, and when Ana’s father realized what was going on he dragged her straight up to the apartment, where the family had to keep a low profile for weeks on end.

  And
that’s what Ana was like in those days, I guess. A close-cropped mischief-maker who hated dresses and spat long gobbets of spit and refused to accept that she couldn’t stand up and pee with the boys, so that her mother was always having to wash her spattered pants. She was small for her age, but that didn’t hold her back. Ana was the one bossing the boys around in the parking lot outside the apartment block, and the neighborhood housewives laughed when they saw the little girl ordering pudgy Gabriel Mitu to climb so far up the chestnut tree that he had to be brought down with a ladder like a cat. If you believe Ana, she tyrannized the whole district—but a fall from the giddy heights of power was just around the corner. When she got back after the Christmas break, Violeta Mincic was standing in the schoolyard. The new girl.

  Violeta, who wasn’t a tomboy like Ana.

  Violeta, who had hair that fell down to her butt.

  Violeta, who somehow made her Pioneers scarf swell in broad, full waves across her chest, who altered and sewed and modified her school uniform just enough that she always stood out from the rest.

  Yes, she was beautiful, but at first it didn’t scare Ana. They made friends that day in the schoolyard, and Violeta was enlisted into Ana’s regiment, assigned roles and tasks in games of Ana’s devising. But although Violeta was allowed to be Nadia Comăneci when they played The Olympics, although Violeta was allowed first choice when they played Among Mountains and Valleys, she was always just that little bit absent, or aloof, or whatever you’d call it in a nine-year-old.

  Violeta’s true intentions emerged after a few weeks. As soon as she’d picked up how it all worked—who decided what, when, and why—she struck. At recess one day, when Ana wanted to play Rainforest and was splitting up her classmates into insects, carnivores, and herbivores, Violeta sprang her surprise.

  That game, she said. You know it’s just for babies.

  No, it isn’t, said Ana.

  Okay, fine. If you want to play Ana’s game, said Violeta, then play it. I’m just a bit too old.

  So what do you want to play, then? asked Gabriel Mitu, who could sense which way the wind was blowing: another day as the hippopotamus.