< Apart From Love: Chapter 17 >

Leonard And Lana

He was seated at the table next to her, and noticed her long, wavy hair. It had blond streaks, and smelled good. The perfume was very subtle—just enough to put him under a spell. Naturally, he found himself tongue tied. He felt as if his boss expected him to be sociable and charming—which made him, without fail, even more rigid than usual.

He ate in silence, swallowing his pride along with a mouthful of chicken soup, and listened to the symphony of sounds around him: Le’Chaim! Le’Chaim! To Life, said the guests, wine cups clinking against each other, chuckles spreading, chewed-up words garbling into slurps and gulps, punctuated here and there by soup sipping intervals.

Lana was chatting across the table with his boss. Despite her bubbly laughter—or maybe because of it—Leonard thought he could detect a certain strain, a certain tension in her voice. She seemed a bit uptight, even nervous at times, which brought up in her a heavy Russian accent. It was especially pronounced during the first few sentences. Then it softened a bit; or maybe he learned to like to the way it played out. Normally that accent would be jarring to his ears; but now, to his surprise, he found it musical, endearing even.  

He noticed the various rhythms of her breathing—at times excited, at times relaxed. Her wrist was so close to his that he could sense her warmth through the fabric of her blouse, and it set him afire. By the end of the main course he managed to ask her, with a sudden catch in his voice, to pass the butter. The effort left him speechless; and so he thanked her in his own manner, with a slight nod but without meeting her eyes.

What color were they? He had absolutely no idea; her whole figure was, to him, a blur.

At this point it became clear to him that the entire evening was simply a disaster, and that the earlier he would leave, the better he could preserve some semblance of having enjoyed it. He was gone, quite abruptly, halfway through dessert.

A week later his boss, who could be overbearing at times, invited him to dinner once again; and caught off guard, Leonard heard himself being agreeable.

“Seven o’clock?” he said, “Sure. I’ll be there.”

This time he gave some attention to his appearance. Standing in front of the mirror, hands stuck in the sleeves, he pulled a sweater over his head. He flailed a bit until he managed, somehow, to find the opening; at which time Leonard saw his father’s eyes rising up over the neckband. They looked squarely at him from the glass, tired and brown. The eyes were followed by a nose and finally—a mustache. That was the moment Leonard decided to shave it.      

As the hour struck seven, he rang the doorbell. His boss was happy to see him, as were the other guests. Leonard was astonished to see Lana, even more beautiful than he remembered. This time, the conversation flowed with perfect fluency, which seemed incredibly lucky to him. They were seated side by side in the same places as last time. The challah bread was beautifully braided and so was her hair. The food was great, the company—divine!

He discovered that—just like him—she loved Opera. With a sudden blush, Lana told him that she could appreciate the purity of vocal tone. She said she adored Puccini and could even describe, in heavy Russian accent, several passages from the greatest Italian operas written by him. Her cheeks were so red, so rosy! She talked about Tosca, about La Boheme, and by the time she recited a few notes from Madama Butterfly, Leonard knew he had to have this woman, even though the color of her eyes was still a mystery to him.

She scribbled something for him inside his paper napkin and, taking a quick peek, he found her name, her phone number and a little doodle of a heart. Both Leonard and Lana got up to leave at the same time: Halfway through dessert.

Little did he know that a week from now they would be sitting at the front row of the music center hall, holding hands and absorbing a heavenly soprano voice that filled the air with Summertime. She would know to tell him that George Gershwin found the inspiration to write this aria in a simple Ukrainian lullaby, and Leonard would believe her. A month from now he would rent an apartment, and they would be moving in together.

But at this moment—on his way out, just about to open the door for Lana—he knew one thing, and one thing only: He was walking on air. So elated was his state of mind, so grand was his happiness, his heart swelled in him with such a powerful pulse, that nothing else mattered.

Catching sight of the host winking an eye at the other guests, and hearing some muted giggles behind his back, all that left absolutely no impression in him—none whatsoever. He ignored that wink and those giggles, and closed the door.

The whole thing flew right out of his mind until a full year later.

One Year Later

Leonard ate his breakfast glancing, from time to time, at that note that Lana had left for him. He was torn between a need to unfold the paper and an urge to crumple it. Either way, he found himself suddenly with the realization that now was the first time in a long while—a full year, in fact—that he was alone. Completely alone. A certain feeling was throbbing in his heart—something between relief, anger, sadness and above all, amazement that she was gone and he was free.

Leonard turned on the CD player and sank into the sofa, determined to spin away the hours to the tune of cheerful melodies. He kicked off his slippers, stretched his legs across the top of the coffee table and closed his eyes, so that the sight of things would not distract him from listening.

The room disappeared. It was Summertime. His ears started moving at the sides of his head like agitated seismographs, registering every minute reverberation, every note. On the inside of his eyelids, space started to sway around him, gently at first; it was marked by intervals, time intervals that flowed from the lyrics and swept over him, opening and closing in an increasingly complex sequence.  

Summertime. It reminded him of their first date; and of the time that passed since then. True, Lana was a good companion; he loved her; he could find nothing to complain. And the livin’ was easy... For a whole year, she accompanied him dutifully to the Opera. And yet, time laid bare the fact that she was bored to tears sitting there, trying to entertain herself somehow by studying the costumes, the lighting, and the scenery—everything that for him was secondary. Only now did he realize that her proclaimed love of music was as real as the blond streaks in her hair.

For him the affair had started in glory, in an illusion of a joy they could share together, and then, for some reason, gone downhill—until hitting the low point yesterday, when his boss, who was by now about to retire, came into his office.

“Leonard old boy! What a lucky man you are!” said the old man. “Well, let me tell you this: all good things come to an end. My last day here, you know.”

“I know,” said Leonard, not sure what should be said in such circumstance.

“And how is Lana? What a woman, let me tell you, what a woman! I taught her everything she knows —”

“You did, did you?”

“About the Opera, that is! Those were the days, I tell you! What a woman, what a fine woman! What a lucky, lucky man you are! As soon as she met you, that first time—remember? The very next day, she borrowed all those books from me—the Harvard Dictionary of Music, the Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Opera, a fine book I must say, just too many words, too may words! And that’s not all, she took A Critical Biography of Puccini, and another book, I think, The Memory of All That: The Life of Gershwin—you name it, she took it! All my CDs too—Tosca, Madama Butterfly—”

“For the love of music,” said Leonard, with an acid undertone in his voice.

“Hell no!”

“How do you mean, No?”

“It was for you,” said the old man, and then he did a strange thing: He winked.

With that one wink, something became clear in his memory, as if a cell cracked open: He saw himself standing there on the threshold—on his way out, just about to open the door for Lana—listening, attentively this time, to those muted giggles behind his back. He stood there, at that second, for what seemed like an eternity. He hated those other guests, he hated his host; they had all been laughing at him!

They knew, did they not, that Lana was putting on an illusion, a fine illusion just for him. There was no shyness in her blush. They knew she liked him, liked him well enough to lie to his face. That was some performance! He hated himself for being so stupid as to fall for it. He should not have shaved his mustache.

That evening, when he came home from work, she asked him about his day; he gave no answer. Later in bed, just before rolling over and facing the wall, he blurted out suddenly, “You don’t understand me. You don’t know a thing.”

“What?” said Lana.

“Nothing,” he said. “Not a thing.”

“What is it with you tonight?”

He gave her a long silence as an answer. After a while he thought he felt the stroke of her fingers on his back, and suddenly could no longer take it.

“Why the devil did you do it?” he said. “Lying to me, everything—every little thing you said, from Puccini to Gershwin. You know nothing about all that, do you. Not a thing. You and your Ukrainian lullaby!”

After that, he found himself unable to sleep, and was forced to listen for hours on end to the singsong of crickets filling the night air, and to the faraway noise of traffic. At sunrise, just as he started to dose off, an ambulance could be heard speeding across the street, its alarm rising sharply to a pitch, then falling away into the distance. Here and there someone banged the lid of a garbage can. Bang-bang. Then bang.

One thing missing from all of this was the regular rhythm of her breathing. In twelve months of living together, that rhythm for him was softer, sweeter, and more necessary than any lullaby. He turned over to find out that which he already knew: Lana was not in bed.

Her folded note had been left for him on the breakfast table. Now it waited there, crisp and white. He could see it even from afar, even as he sank deeper into the back cushion of the sofa. Oh, he would read that note, Leonard promised himself, he would, as soon as Summertime died down; no, maybe later, at noon—or even later still; perhaps when darkness came and the crickets picked up where the music left off.

“For the love of music,” he said to himself as loudly as he could, for there was no one else there with whom he could talk. “What does she know. Nothing, I swear, not a thing.”

For some reason, his voice sounded hollow and unconvincing to his ears. Don’t you cry, cried someone inside him. He wanted to close his eyes and drift away, anywhere but here; but his curiosity would not let him do it.

He found the sight of that note so peculiar, so distracting that he could no longer concentrate on the lyrics. Maybe it was not her fault. Not entirely, at least. Maybe it was him. It was the music, too; listening demanded his full attention. It carried him away, to a different place.

Yes, his eyes were closed for too long. Maybe he never really looked at Lana. Leonard uttered her name once or twice and suddenly remembered that to this day, if someone would ask him about the color of her eyes, he would not know what to say.

In spite of himself, Leonard knew he missed the rhythm of her breathing. He missed it terribly. He needed to hear the swish of her hair, the soft whoosh of her footfalls, and above all, the way she talked.

He wondered what Lana knew about him, having studied him so diligently from the beginning. Then he wondered if he, in turn, knew anything about her: Who she was, the inner language of her thoughts. For the first time in twelve months, he wondered if her dreams played out in heavy Russian accent.

It was then that Leonard got up to his feet. Perhaps that note was nothing more than a to-do list; it could happen that way, could it not? Maybe she simply scribbled something for him, a doodle or a heart, inside that paper. A great urge swelled in his heart.

He went over to the table, picked up the note and very carefully, unfolded it—

Uvi Art Gallery