The Invention of Ana Read online

  By the time we hung up I’d gotten off the bike and was walking under the elevated tracks of the JMZ line, the trains shrieking as they bore down on Brooklyn from the bridge. I was in a totally different mood than before her call. There was a lightness tickling in my legs as I pushed the bike east, imagining what Ana might have meant by time travel. Was she dressing up in clothes from another era, perhaps, or reenacting one of her ancestors’ lives, following a grandmother’s diary like a manuscript? Like a ghost invited into her body, I thought, as I sauntered along to the sounds of the bachata or merengue, the smells of fried plantains or whatever was coming out of the bodegas, and on Montrose Avenue I saw an image of my swelled idealized self reflected in the window of a car: a young writer walking through the big city on his way to meet an artist friend, open and curious, headed for new adventures.

  I made good time to the gallery, but once I was standing outside the entrance I got cold feet. Not wanting to seem too eager, I preferred to arrive a little late. So I took a walk to pass the time, standing on a street corner for a few minutes and watching the trucks hurtle down the avenue and the wind twitching at the cherry trees until the petals sifted down like snow or ash or confetti, I couldn’t find the right simile. Maybe they were just like petals, flowers content to be flowers, not wanting to be anything else. Once I was suitably late, I went back and entered the gallery. I couldn’t see Ana anywhere, but in the corner stood a wooden structure with a little sign: Ana Ivan, The Time Traveler (2010). The installation was square, measuring two or three yards on each side. Through an opening I could make out the interior walls, which were covered in posters and hand-drawn sketches, and a TV playing a video. Squeezing through the opening, I put the headphones on and listened to the man on the screen, who was explaining something about photons and quantum mechanics in a thick accent, about Zeno’s paradox, time, and gravitation. I must have been engrossed, because when I suddenly felt a hand on my shoulder I spun around with a jolt.

  Oh, it’s just you, I said, when I saw Ana behind me with a skewed smile and dark hair slanting over her forehead.

  Did I scare you? she said. Sorry.

  Ana took a step closer, standing almost underneath me, her face inches from mine, and suddenly I could smell her scent. A bit like crêpes or pancakes, or it could have been Belgian waffles. It was the moisturizer she used, smelling of sweet dough against a warm pan.

  So. Welcome to my time machine, she said. Have you figured out how it all works?

  No, not really.

  Okay, then here goes, she said, pointing at the calendar on the nearest wall, a calendar that was more like a notice board, all the days covered with notes and calculations, and I smiled as Ana explained that she was researching the discrepancy between human and astronomical timekeeping, that for three months she was going to live on precise astronomical time. It seemed the Gregorian calendar didn’t fit the Earth’s passage around the sun. We calculate a year as three hundred sixty-five days, but in fact it takes three hundred sixty-five days, five hours, forty-eight minutes, and forty-six seconds for the Earth to complete its orbit. On leap days our time is brought back into correspondence with reality, but during the four years between each leap day it gets dislocated, and our perception slips further and further away from astronomically correct time.

  See what I mean? she said. You’re practically living in the future.

  And you aren’t?

  No, I’ve traveled back to the present, I’m living on the correct time. So, for you there are only six hours left of today, but I’ve still got more than sixteen. It’s only a couple of hours since I got up.

  Then she showed me a poster densely scribbled with times and dates and numbers of hours, and a drawing of the Earth’s path around the sun. She’d worked it all out with the Romanian astrophysicist in the video, and she told me that our time right now was ten hours and seventeen minutes ahead of the real, the actual, the true time, the time that wasn’t plucked out of thin air but determined by the only factor that really meant anything, the Earth’s position with respect to the sun, the star we orbited and depended on for everything, the single-celled bacteria in the seas, the plankton living off them, the fish and squid and reefs of coral that stretched deep into the oceans, the fruits of the orchards and the grain in the fields, the star that had brought us out of our caves and into civilization, the sun, that’s what mattered, not some idiotic calendar a pope had chosen.

  Okay, okay, the sun, I said, smiling. You’re really into this stuff, aren’t you?

  Of course I’m into it, she said. It’s about my life, it’s my work.

  I nodded, and Ana went up to the wall and leafed through a calendar.

  And what about you? she said. What about your work? Did you bring me a story?

  Um, no, I said, not exactly. I mean, I’ve written a draft. But I didn’t know if you were serious. If you really meant it.

  Ana narrowed her eyes and let go of the calendar.

  So, she said, you’re telling me you don’t take me seriously?

  No, no, I didn’t mean it like that.

  Okay, then where’s the story? Send it to me.

  Well, I’ve actually got it here in my bag. But it’s not the final version. It’s just a draft, it’s really not finished yet.

  That’s fine, but I’m your reader, right? And it’s good to get feedback from readers. Agreed?

  Agreed.

  Good, so hand it over. I’ll read it while we have a cup of coffee.

  I couldn’t say no to her. An hour earlier I’d been ready to chuck the whole thing into the garbage, and now I was biking over the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge, excited and confused, with Ana by my side. At the apex of the bridge, Ana braked. It was seven in the evening—nine in the morning by astrological time—and she said it was exactly the right moment to enjoy the view. For several minutes we stood on the platform and gazed across at the island, at the skyscrapers and the spaces between them, the sunlight transitioning slowly into the glare of many thousands of lamps. It never really got dark, but for a moment the two lights met, the natural and the artificial, and the city and sky dissolved together. The next it was over, only electricity was left, and we tramped farther up the hill, past the cemetery and the lurid Sunnyside arch beneath the train tracks, and I arrived for the first time in Woodside. It was a motley kind of area. Victorian terraced houses stood cheek by jowl with garages and repair shops, apartment blocks with faux-timber-framed buildings, and as we biked through the warm evening we were lit by neon signs in Spanish and Filipino, and sparks from the trains that clattered along the overhead tracks. Ana pointed to the building where she lived and we turned down a side street, where we parked our bikes and sat down underneath a restaurant’s paper lanterns.

  Ana ordered coffee, I ordered beer, and while we waited for our drinks Ana got out my story and read it in silence. I tried to sneak a glance over the pages and catch a wrinkled forehead or a jeering smile, but I couldn’t interpret her reaction. Just as she was putting down the final piece of paper, the waitress came over with the drinks, and Ana spent a few minutes asking me one question after the next, as though playing for time or dodging the issue, I thought, because she felt awkward about my clumsy story.

  Remind me, she asked, you said you’ve been published before?

  Only a few small things, I said. And only back in Denmark, it doesn’t mean anything.

  So you have been published.

  I guess you can call it that.

  And how does it work, do you have a publisher or what?

  Nothing permanent.

  You’re a free man.

  Free as a bird. Or as the unemployed.

  And the form, what about that? Short stories, or what—novels, short prose, serials?

  Well, I don’t know. Depends on the story.

  So you’re not fussy.

  No, don’t think so.

  Basically you don’t care who I send it to?

  What do you mean?

  I mean
your short story. Aren’t you intending to publish it? I’ve got a friend who’s an editor at a literary magazine. And I have another friend who works for an agency, so who would you prefer?

  You mean you like it?

  Stop playing dumb. I’m not going to send crap to my friends, am I?

  Then she tucked the pages into her canvas bag, and I remember sitting mutely, clinging to my glass of beer, while Ana talked about her friend who’d started the literary magazine in the eighties out of boredom or a lost bet or a game of Truth or Dare. Nobody’d given the magazine more than a volume or two, but now it had been in print for close to thirty years, its archives were included in Columbia University’s manuscript collection, and it had fancy offices down in Fort Greene.

  Wow, I said, that all sounds pretty great.

  So I’m sending it to her, then?

  Of course, I exclaimed. I mean, thanks a lot, that would be awesome.

  Ana nodded and slurped her coffee, and I thought I should thank her or hug her, or at least buy something we could toast with, but I didn’t want to seem like a rube, so instead I told her it was a lovely, mild evening, that we never or almost never had evenings like this in Scandinavia, and that the breeze smelled like holidays in southern Europe.

  Ana snickered. She’d never been on a vacation like that, she said, but if this was how they smelled then that was just as well.

  The only vacations I’ve ever taken, she told me, were at chess camp, as a kid. Plus trips out to the cabin, of course, the ones I told you about.

  What? I said. What cabin?

  Didn’t I tell you about that?

  I don’t think so, I said, and she put the cup down, leaned across the table as if about to share a secret, whispering or muttering or humming through the twilight, and I leaned across the table too, trying to catch what she was telling me, some story about a cabin her grandpa had started building sixty years ago, a one-room hut, at first, but later extended, growing at pace with the family, acquiring extra bedrooms and bathrooms so rapidly that the floors warped and the walls creaked when there were storms. That evening underneath the paper lanterns, Ana told me how the cabin coiled through the brushwood like one of the slowworms her father found beneath the leaves, how if she put a marble at the foot of her bunk bed she could follow its path through the rooms of the house, watch it hop down the splintery stairs and past the shelves of books so old and damp that tiny mushrooms sprouted between the pages.

  It was the summer of 1989, a summer so overfull with rationing and power outages that family came from near and far to escape the heat of the cities and the stores’ empty shelves. Ana had been looking forward to the trip, filling her blue suitcase with pencils and notebooks, rulers and compasses, and on arriving at the cabin she settled down in the study, took out her pocket calculator, sorted her sheets of logarithmic paper, tugged at her father’s sleeve, and asked him to come and help.

  Ana’s father said: Not right now, sweetheart.

  Ana’s mother said: Don’t start pestering your father.

  Ana’s grandma said: Why don’t you put down that malarkey.

  They were still waiting for the evaluation committee at Cluj to make a decision, but for the last few months things hadn’t been the same. Ana didn’t understand what was going on. From the study she could see her mother on the terrace, a women’s magazine unread in front of her, and several times she saw her in the kitchen, coming to a halt while peeling potatoes, setting one down half-peeled and standing there for thirty minutes at a time, gnawing at the skin around her thumbnail until it grew frayed and bloody and had to be soaked in soapy water for hours.

  And her father? He got up early every morning and brewed coffee. Then he went into the woods, and Ana saw his checked shirt vanish among the trees. She wanted to go with him, but she never woke until the door slammed shut, and the one morning she leaped out of bed and tried to run after him she didn’t get farther than the edge of the woods, because the trees were full of gnats and cobwebs, and ticks hung from the branches, the kind her father picked off his inner thighs each evening.

  Ana gave up math problems. She roamed the house and tore up nettles, went to the beach and threw stones at the gulls. Days passed, but one morning, when Ana was poking at a nettle cluster, her Uncle Simion and Cousin Stefan came driving up the path. They’d been in town to buy butter and eggs, and now they were maneuvering a Ping-Pong table off the truck.

  Got it from the gypsies, said Simion, patting it in satisfaction. Musta fell off the back of a truck.

  Ana didn’t think the table looked like it had fallen anywhere. It was lovely. The Romani always had so many fine things, and Simion and Stefan often did business with them. They bought televisions and stereo systems to repair, took old bikes apart and remade them into new ones. Now they were unpacking the Ping-Pong table, adjusting the legs and washing the surface clean, and Ana wanted to ask her father whether they too could go and buy things from the Romani, whether they too could build Frankenstein bikes, so she went over to the edge of the woods and shouted to him.

  What now? he said, emerging from behind a thicket. Stop yelling. Come over here, I’ve got something to show you.

  Ana walked through the high grass, and he took her hand and pulled her through the trees until they reached a clearing, where an enormous anthill loomed in the shadow of a pine tree.

  What do you make of that, then? he said. It’s a big one, isn’t it?

  Gosh, said Ana, as she admired the mountain of reddish pine needles vibrating like a living thing before her.

  They certainly know how to build, the little brutes, he said, crouching down and pointing at the swarm of insects. But it’s not the ants I’m interested in today. It’s their nemesis.

  Ana turned back and gazed down the path. From the other side of the house she could hear Stefan shouting with excitement, and she imagined the table-tennis ball’s rhythmic smack against the table.

  Dad, she said.

  Have you ever seen an ant lion? he asked.

  Ana shook her head.

  No, of course you haven’t. I haven’t either. Nor has Simion. But unlike Simion, I don’t give up that easily. I know they’re here. They’re lurking somewhere, I’m sure of it. Just got to keep looking.

  Still sitting on his haunches, he nudged the leaves and twigs aside with one hand, then peered thoughtfully in the direction of the beach. Perhaps we’d be better off a little closer to the water. Yes, that might do the trick.

  The next day Simion and Stefan played table tennis, and Ana watched from a tree stump. Simion said Stefan had to learn to smash, and smashing was the same as hitting the ball really hard. It looked difficult. When Stefan smashed, Simion said things like Don’t bend your wrist or Hit the ball to the side of your body, and Simion showed him how to swing the paddle at the right angle. They let Ana have a go, too. But when she smashed, Simion didn’t show her any angles, and every time she hit the ball he said, Good, you’ve got it, even when it missed the table completely.

  When Simion and Stefan started forehand smashing, Ana went back to the anthill. Her father wasn’t there. But a little farther away, up by the gravel track that separated the woods from the beach, she could see his checked shirt. As she battled her way through bushes and trees, she tried not to think about the ticks hanging from the leaves, lying in wait for fresh little-girl leg.

  Dad, said Ana, reaching the gravel track. How long will you be looking for ants?

  Ant lions, sweetheart.

  Ana crouched down and stared at her father’s fingers, which were pushing heather aside and exploring the sand.

  Do you know what sort of fellow an ant lion is?

  Ana shook her head, but he couldn’t have seen her, because his own head was buried deep in the undergrowth.

  Ant lions live here in Romania, but they’re very difficult to find. The larvae dig pits and hide underground, having a grand old time and waiting for an ant to fall into their trap. Then, bam! The ant lion sucks the life ou
t of it.

  But Dad, said Ana.

  If I’m lucky enough to find an ant lion pit, you’ll have quite a drama in store for you. Once you’ve found it, all that’s left to do is lie down on your belly and wait. And if you get impatient and you’re sufficiently heartless, you can always give an ant a little prod in the right direction. There’s something rather fascinating about witnessing the misfortune of others.

  But Dad—

  No buts, sweetheart. Nature is cruel. It’s not like in your cartoons. Life isn’t fair.

  But—

  I’m telling you it isn’t! You might as well forget it.

  Ana was silent a moment. Then she screwed up her courage and asked, But when you’ve found the ant lion, can we play table tennis?

  Table tennis? he said, peering at her in astonishment. You want to play table tennis? Like your pea-brained Uncle Simion?

  Ana stared down at the ground, scraping at the sand with her foot.

  Yes, well. Her father brushed the dirt off his hands. We can, of course. Shall we say after lunch? After lunch we’ll play a game of table tennis.

  Ana used the time to study Simion’s stroke, and later her mother called them in to lunch: soup and mămăligă but no Ciprian. After the meal, Simion took out an old kite from the cupboard; one wing was broken, but he patched it up with tape and the rod from an old New Year’s firework.

  So, said Simion. Anybody want to come down to the beach and fly this thing?

  Ana shook her head and picked up the table-tennis paddle.

  I’m playing with my dad.

  Suit yourself, said Simion, and he and Stefan went down to the beach together.

  Ana stood by the game table and swung the paddle in the air like Simion said you were supposed to: horizontally, and without bending your wrist. She hit at least fifty, maybe a hundred smashes. But then her arm got tired, and she sat back down on the tree stump and picked at the coating on the paddle. She stared into the woods. Not a shirt in sight, not even the sound of her father talking to himself. She closed her eyes to listen better, sitting like that a good long while, so long that at last she thought she could hear the birds and the dragonflies, the rushes swaying in the breeze, a kite fluttering in the wind, and Stefan’s laughter being carried up from somewhere on the beach.