at the clock on the bedside table, she would know the time—ten, eleven, twelve o’clock or already the next day? But she does not want to look. Instead, if she could, she would reverse the time. Have it be yesterday, last week, years ago.
In Paris, in a café on the corner of boulevard Saint-Germain and rue du Bac. She can picture it exactly. It is not yet spring, still cold, but already the tables are out on the sidewalk so that the pedestrians have to step out into the street. It is Saturday and crowded. The chestnut trees have not yet begun to bloom, a few green shoots on the branches give out a hopeful sign.
She remembers what she is wearing. A man’s leather bomber jacket she has bought secondhand at an outdoor flea market, a yellow silk scarf, boots. At the time, she thinks she looks French and chic. Perhaps she does. In any event, he thinks she is French.
Vous permettez? he asks, pointing to the empty chair at her table.
She is drinking a café crème and reading a French book, Tropismes by Nathalie Sarraute.
Je vous en prie, she says, without looking up at him.
She works at an art gallery a few blocks away on rue Jacques-Callot. The gallery primarily shows avant-garde American painters. The French like them and buy their work. Presently, the gallery is exhibiting a Californian artist whose work she admires. The artist is older, well-known, wealthy; he has invited Nina to the hôtel particulier on the Right Bank where he is staying. He has told her to bring her bathing suit—she remembers it still: a blue-and-white checked cotton two-piece. The pool is located on the top floor of the hôtel particulier and is paneled in dark wood, like one in an old-fashioned ocean liner; instead of windows there are portholes. She follows the artist into the pool and as she swims, she looks out onto the Paris rooftops and since night is falling, watches the lights come on. Floating on her back, she also watches the beam at the top of the Eiffel Tower protectively circle the city. Afterward, they put on thick white robes and sit side by side on chaise longues as if they are, in fact, on board a ship, crossing the Atlantic. They even drink something—a Kir royal. She slept with him once more but they did not go swimming again. Before he leaves Paris, he gives her one of his drawings, a small cartoonlike pastel of a ship, its prow shaped like the head of a dog. Framed, the drawing hangs downstairs in the front hall.
Philip begins by speaking to her about Nathalie Sarraute. He claims to know a member of her family who is distantly related to him by marriage.
At the time, she does not believe him.
A line, she thinks.
She hears the phone ring downstairs. As a precaution, she has turned it off in the bedroom—why, she wonders? So as not to wake him? She reaches for the receiver but the phone abruptly stops midring. Just as well. She will wait until morning. In the morning she will make telephone calls, she will write e-mails, make arrangements; the death certificate, the funeral home, the church service—whatever needs to be done. Tonight—tonight, she wants nothing.
She wants to be alone.
Alone with Philip.
She is not religious.
She does not believe in an afterlife, in the transmigration of souls, in reincarnation, in any of it.
But he does.
I don’t believe in reincarnation and that other stuff and I don’t go to church but I do believe in a God, he tells her.
Where were they then?
Walking hand in hand along the quays at night, they stop a moment to look across at Nôtre-Dame.
Mathematicians, I thought, weren’t supposed to believe in God, she says.
Mathematicians don’t necessarily rule out the idea of God, Philip answers. And, for some, the idea of God may be more abstract than the conventional God of Christianity.
At her feet, the river runs black and fast, and she shivers a little inside her leather bomber jacket.
Like Pascal, Philip continues, I believe it is safer to believe that God exists than to believe He does not exist. Heads God exists and I win and go to heaven, Philip motions with his arm as if tossing a coin up in the air, tails God does not exist and I lose nothing.
It’s a bet, she says, frowning. Your belief is based on the wrong reasons and not on genuine faith.
Not at all, Philip answers, my belief is based on the fact that reason is useless for determining whether there is a God. Otherwise, the bet would be off.
Then, leaning down, he kisses her.
His eyes shut, Philip lies on his back. His head rests on the pillow and she has pulled the red-and-white diamond-patterned quilt up to cover him. He could be sleeping. The room is tidy and familiar, dominated by the carved mahogany four-poster. Opposite it, two chairs, her beige cashmere sweater hanging on the back of one; in between the chairs stands a maple bureau whose top is covered with a row of family photos in silver frames—Louise as a baby, Louise, age nine or ten, as the Black Swan in her school production of Swan Lake, Louise holding her dog, Mix, Louise dressed in a cap and gown, Louise and Philip sailing, Louise, Philip, and Nina horseback riding at a dude ranch in Montana, Louise and Nina skiing in Utah. Also on top of the bureau is a lacquer box where she keeps some of her jewelry. Her valuable jewelry—a diamond pin in the shape of a flower, a three-strand pearl necklace, a ruby signet ring—is inside the combination safe in the hall closet. Closing her eyes, she tries to remember the combination: three turns to the left to 17, two turns to the right to 4, and one turn to the left to 11 or is it the other way around? In any case she can never get the safe open; Philip has to. And, next to the lacquer jewelry box, the blue-and-green clay bowl Louise made for them in third grade in which, each evening, Philip places his loose change. The closet doors are shut and only the bathroom door is ajar.
When is a door not a door? When it is a . . .
Stop.
Perhaps she should put on her nightgown and lie down next to him and in the morning, when he wakes up he will reach for her the way he does. He will hike up her nightgown. Take it off, he will say. He likes to make love in the morning. Sleepy, she takes longer to respond.
She has not bothered to draw the curtains. Outside, above the waving tree branches, she can make out a few stars in the night sky. A mere dozen in a galaxy of a billion or a trillion stars. Perhaps death, she thinks, is like one of those stars—a star that can be seen only backward in time and exists in an unobservable state. While life, she has heard said, was created from stars—the stars’ debris.
What did he say to her exactly?
I am a bit tired, I am going to lie down for a minute before supper.
or
I am going to lie down for a minute before supper, I am a bit tired.
or something else entirely.
She is in the kitchen. Spinning the lettuce. She looks up briefly.
How was your day?
She half listens to his reply.
We had a faculty meeting. You should hear how those new physicists talk! They’re crazy, Philip says, as he goes upstairs.
She makes the salad dressing, she sets the table. She takes the chicken out of the oven. She boils new potatoes. Then she calls him.
Philip! Dinner is ready.
She starts to open a bottle of red wine but the cork is stuck. He will fix it.
Again, Philip, Philip! Dinner!
Before she walks into the bedroom, she knows already.
She sees his stocking feet. He has taken off his shoes.
What was he thinking? About dinner? About her? A paper he is reading by one of his students, arguing that Kronecker was right to claim that the Aristotelian exclusion of completed infinites could be maintained?
Infinites. Infinite sets. Infinite series.
Infinity