Seven in the morning. Nora pulled back the curtains and opened the window wide. A stream of pleasantly cool air rushed into the room. October’s gentle rays stroked her sleepy face. Outside, a tall maple rustled almost bare, dark-green branches generously sprinkled with leaves of yellow, crimson, and brown. The sky – pale blue, bleached by the past summer’s heat, and covered with light clouds – was still spelling anything but disaster. This was the long-awaited Indian summer, the loveliest time of the year and Nora’s favorite. And the gloomy forecasts seemed to be nothing but talk.
Her husband came up, took his glasses off, put an arm around her shoulders, and gave her not the familiar morning peck on the cheek but a long, lingering kiss on her neck.
“Mike!” she laughed, moving away a little and throwing him a look of surprise. “Isn’t it a bit early for that? Good morning, sweetie.”
“So what? Early’s good. What’s not so good is when it’s too late. Good morning, darling. How did you sleep?”
“After last night? You have to ask? I slept like the dead. You?”
“I hardly slept at all. I’d close my eyes and try to drop off, start sort of dozing. And when I did, I could see you and feel you. Then it was as if you were slipping away from me, and I was scared of losing you. I’d twitch and open my eyes again, to make sure you were still there. Yesterday evening you were different – affectionate, eager to please. Like you used to be. You were so … You were mine.”
“Yours, of course. And not like I used to be but like I always am. Who else’s would I be? Is there any doubt? But … after last night, I think we might be in for … a little surprise.”
“A baby? I’m ready. Very ready, actually. How about you?”
“I’m probably as grown up as I need to be as well… But let’s not do this now. Look what a marvelous morning it is. You can’t even believe that there’s a hurricane coming our way, and by this evening, the weather will be lousy,” Nora said off-hand, nonchalantly, with a lazy stretch. “The lights’ll go out again. And the food in the fridge’ll go bad. Somebody needs to check if we have candles and flashlights.”
“We have both, left over from last time. We may have to buy flashlight batteries, is all. And it wouldn’t be a bad idea to stock up on water and cans of food. Don’t worry, kiddo. Call me after lunch and remind me, please. I’ll leave work early, stop at the supermarket, and buy everything.”
“I’m not worried. What a pain – a hurricane, big deal! How many of them have we had here in New York? It’s not like we live in Florida. Nothing bad can happen around here. Or at worst, the roof will leak again. We’ll put a bucket in the bedroom. And if water gets into the basement, we’ll pump it out. Maybe the subway will flood. We’ll stay home and not go to work. An extra day off, then. And that’s it. Good grief, they’ve been spooking us for days. I’m sick of it. They’re just panicking people for no good reason.”
“They’re saying this hurricane will be stronger than most. They’re not spooking us, they’re warning us. They’ve said our area will be under an evacuation order. Well, anyway, when I get home, we’ll see… It looks more serious than it’s been before.”
“What’s to see? Nobody’s evacuating. Listen, I’m not budging from here. And there’s nowhere to go anyway. We don’t have a second home yet, you and I. We can’t afford it . So we’d have to go to a shelter. And we need a shelter like we need a hole in the head. Lying around on government-issue mattresses on a dirty floor in some random school building , surrounded by other sweaty, stinky bodies... Thanks a lot, but that’s not my thing. I’ll pass! I mean, you know how I like to be clean. We’ll sit it out here somehow, won’t we, sweetie? The houses around and the walls will help. I love our little house so much!”
Nora smiled, gave her husband a peck on the cheek, and went to shower and have some coffee.
“Whatever you say, princess.” Mike kissed his wife again and left for work.
She’d got a good one there. Her parents were over the moon about their son-in-law. Her girlfriends were jealous – some secretly, some openly jealous. And no kidding! What a guy she’d landed – charismatic, clever, kind, hard-working. He loved her, spoiled her, humored her every whim, did all but put her on a pedestal. True, there were no children … yet. But that was probably fixable. And she’d been such a dimwit, not knowing, unable to make up her mind, racking her brains on whether or not to marry him. She’d just never been able to forget her first love. It was in the past, though. In the dim and distant past… It could have been in a whole other life.
That day brought not a single customer to the travel agency where she worked. And her fellow agents weren’t doing anything meaningful either, just watching the television news. The situation had gone from bad to worse. The city authorities were strongly urging residents of coastal zones A and B to put all their necessities into a backpack, lock up their homes, top off the gas tank, and move inland, as far from the ocean as they could. The agency owner realized that no business was going to get done, that the day would be all jitters and pointless staring at computer screens, so at two in the afternoon, she closed up shop and sent everyone home.
“Off you go, girls, and God speed. We’ll be in touch by phone if we can. I don’t know about you, but I’m getting in my car, picking up my husband, my son, and some food, and we’re going to our country house in the Catskills. We’ll light a fire in every fireplace, get warm and snug, and, with a bit of luck, we’ll sit out the hurricane there. If anyone wants to come along, be my guest. There’ll be two empty seats in the car.”
Everyone thanked her, but no one was signing on to make a run for her mountain cottage; they were all thinking about their own families. Not waiting for her husband to come from work, Nora headed straight to the market, stood in a long checkout line, and bought water, a variety of canned goods, batteries for the flashlights and the radio, and even toilet paper. Hypnotized-looking folks were grabbing whatever they could. The shelves were emptying rapidly…
Have they all lost their minds? Worrywarts! Sheeple!
By the time Nora got back, the sky was dark and threateningly heavy, but the wind was still just picking up and it hadn’t started raining yet. She called her husband on his cell and told him that there was nothing left to buy because she had already stocked up on all the essentials. Instead, he should get home fast, before they shut the subway down.
The television reports were still hyping the situation: “Precipitation is expected to be continuous over the next several days. The storm surge will come at high tide, leading to severe flooding in coastal zones. Estimated losses to property on the Eastern seaboard are calculated in the…” Too irritated to listen anymore, she turned off the television.
Oh, for Pete’s sake! So we’ll be sitting here day after day, listening to that brainwashing and shaking with fear of what the weather might do… It’s enough to drive you nuts.
Her husband was late. She wanted to put together some things, some documents, some money just in case, but she couldn’t concentrate. Whatever she picked up slid right out of her hands, so she decided to trust in God and dumb luck. Looking at her – mournfully, reproachfully – from a corner of the living room was a guitar in a shabby case. “Are you abandoning me, you turncoat?” it seemed to ask. “But I’m alive. You should take me upstairs to the bedroom. Save and protect. If you don’t, you’ll be sorry…”
“You’ll scrape through, girlfriend,” Nora said dismissively. “You’re the least of my worries right now.”
She paced to and fro, from kitchen to living room and back again. The clock showed seven. She tried her husband’s cell again. The number she was calling was not available at that time.
Mike’s probably on the subway. But supposing he isn’t? What if something’s happened? He’s always called when he’s going to be late. Her faithful, reliable husband.
In her seven years with him, she had become so accustomed to his reliability that she just about came unglued when she couldn’t raise him on the phone.
My nerves are completely shot. I need to calm down. This won’t do. The hurricane might not be bad at all. It might even weaken before it gets to New York. That’s happened before, after all. Any minute now I’ll hear the key in the lock, the door will open, and Mike will be there in the doorway…
The wall clock ticked out the seconds, much louder than usual. Mike still didn’t come and didn’t call. Nora was in a terrible state. Unable to stay alone in the house any longer, she locked the door and went out onto the deck and then went down to the street, where her legs carried her to the beach of their own accord. Was this curiosity or a fit of insanity? She didn’t know why she was wandering toward the ocean.
The streets were almost dead. Occasional passers-by were hurrying home, to shelter there from the worsening weather. The ocean, now the color of steel, was swelling, heaving, ramping up for the storm waves that would come spilling onto the shore. But the peak of the storm was yet to come. Aside from her, there were still a few other equally curious thrill-seekers – or lunatics? – on the beach. One was shooting video with a professional camera, with all the enthusiasm of someone making a living by risking his neck. Nora went up to him and asked:
“Is this for a news program or just for yourself, for the memory?”
“I don’t know yet. Depends on what happens. Maybe I’ll keep it as a memento.” Then he said, in a voice from the past: “Nora, is that you?”
“Yes, it’s me – Nora. And who are you? Oh, my God! Frank! I thought I’d never see you again. Especially not like this…”
“Why not? We live in the same city, so there was – there is – always a likelihood that our paths would cross. I think about you often, you know. It left a bad taste and it hurts, the way it all ended. To be honest, you’re the best thing that ever happened to me. I’ve been wanting to tell you that for so long. But I haven’t had the chance.” He said all this quickly, so quickly, as if he were afraid that he would run out of time and never have another opportunity.
“Ha! Well, that’s something of a paradox, Frankie. Don’t you think? I’m the best woman you ever had, so that’s why you married someone else.”
What could she say to him? That he was still in her dreams, far away and beyond her reach? That her one and only reason for marrying Mike had been to fight fire with fire? And that the fire had never really gone out? That now she’d heard his voice, she couldn’t move if she tried?
Her heart was pounding in her chest, in her neck, in her temples, and even in her fingertips. The ocean waves were growing, crashing, drowning out their voices and threatening to lick every living thing from the strip of beach with predatory tongues. And drag it all into the abyss.
“I married someone else because you weren’t easy to live with, Nora. You were Hollywood-pretty, young, and ambitious. You would send me packing, then oh so graciously bring me close again. If you remember, our dates often ended in fights.”
“I remember. Then you always called first, and we made up. Ugh, what a hard case I was.”
“Maybe not a hard case, but a brat – that’s for sure. And it seemed to me that it wasn’t me you loved but some ideal you’d conjured up. You wanted me to do the impossible. But this girl, the other girl, she took me as I am. And that’s why I married her. I’m a run-of-the-mill journalist, with no claims to any great talent.” Frank was trying to outshout the ocean. He turned off the video camera and took her by the hand. “That does it. I’ve got my footage. We have to beat feet, and quick, or the hurricane’ll sweep us away. Are you hearing me?”
The touch of his hand. The hand with long, manicured fingers, the soft hand that had never known manual labor. Only a camera and a computer. And the secrets of a woman’s body – hers, his wife’s, and probably others who had loved him and been loved by him.
Nora froze.
Run? Where to? And why?
“What’s wrong with you, Nora. Don’t you hear me? We have to go,” Frank yelled. He shook her by the shoulders, then tugged at her arm, dragging her along faster and faster. She trotted beside him, a marionette on a string. There was no fear. She was simply submitting to the will of the … the puppeteer.
It was sprinkling now. The demented wind blowing at their backs seemed strong enough to send them airborne. The ocean had swamped the shore, had swallowed up the remains of last summer’s grass and flowers, the benches and the bushes. They were running along desolate streets, and the water kept coming. It was already up to Nora’s knees, then almost to her waist. Frank was a head taller. He picked her up – a rag doll, soaking wet.
How far could he carry her before he collapsed from exhaustion?
But they were fortunate enough to find an old four-story house with an open door. The occupants had probably escaped, so panicked they had forgotten to lock up. Nora and Frank went inside, clambering up to the top floor. The stairwell had light for a few minutes, until there was a flash and a scraping, and impenetrable darkness set in. Shivering with cold, Nora silently clung to Frank. He hugged her and began to kiss a face wet with rain and tears. She must have been crying. In terror of the hurricane or in a hurricane of happiness?
Frantically, blissfully, Nora kissed Frank back, muttering: “My God! I love you like I did before. What will we do? What will happen to us?”
“Nora, Nora, I love you too! I’m going crazy. Dammit, this is messed up! I don’t want to think what will happen to us. Whose idea was it that we have to think? We’ll ride out the hurricane, and then we’ll do our thinking.”
Drenched, chilled to the bone, they stood on the landing in someone else’s home and kissed, kissed as they had when they were young, oblivious to time and the hurricane. The memories came flooding back with the waves. The past fifteen years seemed to have disappeared, and their student romance was continuing from where it had left off.
“Do you remember that Christmas together, and our first night in the winter cottage in the mountains with the fireplace that wouldn’t stay lit? There was a howling blizzard. You kept me warm, you cuddly, happy, bumbling little kitten.”
“Yes, the kitten’s a little threadbare now. But then again, he’s a well-coordinated, full-grown … cat. Is that what you wanted to say?”
“No! I mean, yes! I’m so confused. You’ve grown into a man, Frank. I remember a twenty-year-old boy, a romantic who played the blues on his guitar. I still have your guitar, you know, and I’ve even learned to play a little. You left it at my place. We fought … for the last time, and you never came back for it.”
“I never intended to. I left you the guitar to remember me by. I bought myself a new one.”
“Do you still play guitar, Frankie?”
“I used to noodle around. Now I don’t. There’s no time. Trips, articles, assignments, family… But when I saw you, I wanted to have it in my hands again.”
“You just said ‘family.’ Do you have children?”
“Yes, two boys. You?”
“Not yet… We’re planning to. But we shouldn’t have started talking about families. I sense a guilt complex brewing inside me.”
“There’s not a damn thing brewing in me, though. No complexes here. See, you were mine before I had a family.”
Frank yanked down the zipper on Nora’s jacket, and his hands, those familiar hands, began playing the blues on her body.
“What are you doing to me? I’m all wet, all covered with sand. And I’m not ashamed. I feel so good and not ashamed at all. If you want … right here, on the staircase…”
“I do, so much!” Then he got a grip, “But no, not here. Not now. That’s crazy. When the hurricane’s over… We need to go downstairs and see what’s happening outside, if the water has subsided. Come on. Careful. Hold on to me. If we stand here like this forever, we’ll freeze, petrify, and turn into Rodin’s Kiss.” He laughed, and pulled Nora down the stairs.
The wind was still raging, a cold drizzle was coming down, but the water had receded, some of it returning to the bowl of the ocean. Feeble lights burned in houses where people must have lit candles.
“This is a good way to get sick. We’d best get ourselves home and change. Where do you live? I’ll take you home and then I’ll go and change too.”
“I live not far from here, almost around the corner.”
Mike’s probably decided that I’m lost or drowned. Poor Mike! He’s having fits back there, and here I am…
Nora made for home with Frank at her side, both struggling to keep their feet. She tripped on a chunk of broken sidewalk, and he could not hold her, so she went sprawling into the ooze that coated her street. He helped her up and tried to use the streaming rain to wash the dark mask from her face, but all that did was smear the mud. He burst out laughing again.
He was always laughing, her darling, her Frank.
“Oh, Nora – you’re not a pretty sight. We’ll have to tell people you’ve been taking a therapeutic mud bath.”
“There you go! A quick round trip to Baden-Baden. Here’s my house.”
“Nice little place. Who’s that standing at the window with a candle? Your husband?”
“Yes, that’s Mike. His eyes are bad. I think it’s too dark for him to make us out. But it doesn’t matter now anyway. I couldn’t care less. I’ll find something to tell him.”
“Tell him that I heroically plucked you from the water and saved you. I have to go, sweetheart. When this is all over – in a week, I hope – come to the beach at six in the evening, back to where we met. Will you come?”
“You have to ask? Of course I’ll come, I’ll run, I’ll crawl. Wait for me there for several evenings in a row, alright?”
“OK. I’ll go to the beach every evening and … wait, wait, wait. Your husband’s really staring at us. I’m sure he can see us. I can’t even kiss you goodbye.”
“But this isn’t goodbye, is it?”
“No, it’s not. We didn’t meet again just so we could say goodbye. See you later! Gotta go.”
“Go! No, don’t! Kiss me.”
“But he’s at the window, watching.”
“Not any more. Look, the light’s disappeared. He’s probably gone downstairs to let me in. And if he does see, so what?”
He pressed his lips to hers and went away, into the wind-whipped rain. She hadn’t even gotten around to asking where he lived. They hadn’t exchanged numbers.
How silly! How childish! She should have invited him in, to shower, to get warm, to change. Into Mike’s clothes? But what would she say to Mike? She’d come up with something.
Nora opened the front door. Their cozy, well-tended home, their own dear home into which she and her husband had put so much love, effort, and money, greeted the lady of the house with absolute darkness and icy cold. She could have been at the bottom of a well that had been drained of its water. On the staircase to the second story, with a burning candle in his hand, stood Mike, the guardian of the family hearth. The candle in his trembling hand was throwing fanciful, guttering shadow-patterns, onto the walls. They looked at each other for several seconds, then Nora said in an artificially upbeat voice:
“So here I am, Mike. I’ve shown up and … I’m a bit the worse for wear. What time is it? My watch got waterlogged and stopped, and besides, I can’t see a blessed thing.”
“My God, where have you been? What happened? I nearly went out of my mind. Who was that man who was with you in the street? Where did he come from?”
He’s talking so loud! Why is he yelling like that?
Her head was splitting. She could hardly stand.
“Oh please don’t yell. Good lord, what a lot of questions all at once! I’m soaked through, and I fell in the mud. Can’t you see? I need to shower and change. Light another candle or bring a flashlight, will you? I’ll tell you everything … later,” she muttered, and blacked out.
She came to on the bed upstairs. Her body, delightfully clean, was wrapped in a cocoon of blankets. She felt warm, comfy, good.
But why are candles burning on the nightstand and in front of the mirror? What’s happening? Am I sick? Am I dying?
“You’re awake at last, my angel. I wanted to call an ambulance but the cell phone and the landline are both out. I rubbed you down with a sponge, dried you, and dressed you. How do you feel now?”
“I … I don’t know. What are the candles for? Are they coming to give me the last rites? Am I dying?”
“Of course you’re not! The electricity is still off. You came home during the hurricane and passed out, and you’ve been sleeping for a whole day. Do you remember now? I think you’re perfectly well. It’s just that you were worn to a frazzle, my darling little girl.”
“The hurricane? Oh, yes…” Nora remembered it all and stopped talking.
Now her husband would start tormenting her, questioning her on what had happened. She couldn’t, and she shouldn’t, leave him without any explanation at all. Later, though. Meanwhile, she had to come up with something, with a plausible lie. She was a bad liar.
Nora closed her eyes again.
“I’m going to sleep some more. Is that OK?”
“Sleep, my sweetheart; sleep my pet. I’m not going to ask you any questions. When you want to, you’ll tell me everything yourself. Just so long as you’re alive, well, and here with me. We have a gas cartridge for the camp stove. When you wake up, I’ll warm some broth and bring it up to you. Now I’m off to pump some more water out of the basement.”
What a remarkable person my husband is. And I … I’m such a piece of trash. I ran off into the hurricane, down to the ocean. I kissed Frank like a madwoman, went wallowing in the mud. Serves me right. But I do love Frank. I’ve always loved Frank. And Mike? I love him too, but differently. What a mess this all is…
She lounged in bed for another day, until she no longer had the strength to lie there, doing nothing and thinking, thinking…
I have to get up, get dressed, and start helping my husband. I’ll think about it later. Why do people ponder themselves to distraction?
The dank living room had a nasty, slightly putrid smell of wet furniture and damp fabric. The carpets had shrunk. Nora hadn’t moved the guitar upstairs, although it had begged to be taken to the bedroom.
Poor guitar!
She ran her hand across the strings. The guitar gave out a hollow, hoarse, almost human sigh, as though it were reproaching her and asking for her help yet again. The sofa and loveseat had absorbed the moisture in the air and swelled up like bloated bodies. On the coffee table lay books that she had never finished reading. Their pages, all yellow and brown blotches, reminded her of autumn leaves after a rain shower. She started raking through that surreal still-life. The rapping of tools carried up from the basement: her husband was fixing something, trying to bring life back to their hurricane-battered home.
A week went by with no questions from Mike. By an unspoken agreement they didn’t talk about how she had vanished and just shown up again. Nora cleaned up the house by rote, taking out the garbage, sorting things into those to toss and those to dry, and smiling at her husband with a guilty, labored smile. And all the while she was thinking about Frank. Every evening she longed to go to the beach but could not bring herself to. The hurricane had blown itself out and her insane longing had become a constant, obsessive desire to see him.
Another week went by. The lights came on and the boiler kicked in. Things were gradually settling down.
No, she still had to see him, look him in the eye, hear his voice, feel him again. She would ask him if he loved her. It was very important to her for him say that he did. And she would tell him that she loved him as she had before, but the hurricane was over and… Well, she would figure out what to say.
Finally Mike was called back to work. He said he’d be home late. Twilight fell, and Nora ran to the ocean. She went to the deserted, destroyed beach every evening for ten straight days, waiting there for Frank, but he never came. Then she just happened to see a story in the local paper about a talented young journalist who had died trying to start his car when the battery, damaged by salt water, had exploded. And there was Frank’s name.
Frank’s gone.
Unwilling to believe it, she read the report again and again until she knew it by heart. And then she cried out – “aaaa aaaa,” a wordless wail – and was silent, frightened by her own wailing. Quiet now, she kept repeating silently: He’s dead, he’s dead, my Frank’s dead, my boy’s gone…
Weeping, thinking: The hurricane gave him to me for just a few hours and carried him off. Why? What for? In revenge for my love, for my longing, for my betrayal? That terrible, tender hurricane.
She took the guitar out of its case, tuned it, and tried to get a few broken chords out of it.
Frank couldn’t be brought back to life, but she had to revive his guitar
She wanted to play a blues, Frank’s favorite blues, but her trembling fingers went their own way and tangled in the strings.
Her husband came home to find her in tears. On the table in front of her lay the guitar and the paper with that wretched article. Mike straightened his glasses, picked up the newspaper, read the piece, and poked at his wife’s shoulder.
“He’s the one? The one in the hurricane, the one you were … standing with down there? Answer me, do you hear? Just don’t lie to me. I’m begging you not to lie!”
“Yes it’s him. It’s him, it’s him!”
“Did you … love him?”
“Yes, yes, yes! What do you care? He’s gone. Good for you. You’re here and he’s gone.”
There was nothing more to explain. Mike’s right hand clenched reflexively into a fist.
“Go on – hit me, hit me! I deserve it. I wanted to cheat on you, Mike. And if it hadn’t been for the hurricane…”
“You wanted to, but you didn’t. No, you couldn’t do it!”
He slammed his fist down on the table, making the guitar bounce and jangle, before relaxing his hand, waving her away, taking a cigarette from his pocket, and going out onto the deck.
He was out there smoking for a long time. Nora lost track of time. She thought he had left for good, was done with her, but he came back. She was still sitting at the table, staring into space.
“Nora.”
“What do you want? I don’t have the strength for talking. Leave me alone. Have some compassion…”
“Listen to me, little girl. There’s nothing to be done. That’s how it panned out for him. But we have to go on living, you and I. Open your eyes! We’re a family. I love you. And you love me. You do love me, don’t you, Nora?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.”
“But I do. The hurricane’s over. It’s blown itself out. One evening shouldn’t change anything in our life. We wanted to have a baby.”
“A baby? A baby… I’m really in a bad way right now. Go away, please go. I’m sorry, Mike.”
“Be quiet! Don’t say another word.”
* * *
Six months later. Nora and Mike’s life was gradually returning to what passed for normal. Nora was expecting a child. She tried to think about Frank less and less. But whenever she went to the beach, the memories of their last meeting would crash down on her like rampaging waves and drag her into an ocean of delusions and dashed hopes. Over and over she would ask herself, ask God, ask fate, ask providence:
Why? What for?
She would come home, go down into the basement, pick up the guitar, and play a blues, Frank’s “Hurricane Blues.” Mike stayed out of her way. He wasn’t about to take on a ghost. He just went out onto the deck for another cigarette.
Translated from the Russian by Liv Bliss
Yelena Litinskaya was born in Moscow. She graduated from the Moscow State Lomonosov University with the Master’s Degree in Slavic Languages and Literature. In 1979 Yelena immigrated to the United States, where she received her second Master’s Degree in Library and Information Science. She has been working at the Brooklyn Public Library for 30 years (1980-2010) and continued writing poetry and prose. She published 9 books of poetry and short stories in Russian: “Monologue of the Last snow” (1992), “In Search of Me” (2002), “At the Canal” (2002), “Through the Time Distance” (2011), “From Spiridonovka to Sheepshead Bay” (2013), “Games with Muses” (2015), “Woman in a Free Space”(2016), “Librarian’s Notes, or My Town Brooklyn” (2016), “Extrasensory of Love. Tales and Short Stories” (2017). One can find her translations, poems, short stories, tales and articles in literary journals, magazines and almanacs in the US and Russia. http://magazines.russ.ru/authors/l/litinskaya. She is award-winner and a finalist of several international literary contests. Yelena is one of the editors of the Literary Magazine “Gostinaya” (gostinaya.net) and the vice-president of the Russian American Writers’ Association ORLITA.
