The day after the ceremony he stood on another bridge overlooking the Danube. Perhaps it was the same as the one he stood on now, but he could not remember. The winter had come on full force and the ice floes crackled, breaking and refreezing under the surface frosted in snow. An hour he stood there, looking down and wondering if the fall would be enough.
Sometimes all there was to live for—all he held onto—wasn’t enough. Numbness only masked the guilt that threatened to break through at any moment and send him over the edge, but still he stood, and stood, until someone called the police and an officer came to the bridge to see what the trouble was.
“Just sightseeing,” he said, when asked what he was doing.
“You don’t live here?” the officer asked. Eliot couldn’t tell if the man recognized his face.
“No,” Eliot said. “I don’t live here.”
As he said the words, he knew they were true. He couldn’t continue living in a place where the same ghost occupied every street corner, every sidewalk. He went to the airport and asked to buy a plane ticket to America. He wanted to leave the continent behind him, to start anew, and he knew that America would help him. In America, nobody knows or cares about ancestors. In America he would be able to look to the future, and let his past stay where it was, frozen under a layer of ice.
Now he stood again, looking at the Danube. The same, yet different—the water, all of it, different. How can we give rivers names when they change from right underneath us? The name points to the idea of the river, not the water. Not the river itself.
He had fled to America to escape the grief that he knew would haunt him here. He returned to Hungary buoyed by hopes and faint memories of wonderful things, icicles like lace on the rooftops and roses in the garden. But the roses had died back in the late chill of fall and would not bloom again this year; the icicles hung sharp from the entryways, pointed and dangerous. Dead and deadly things.
Brynn lured him with her beauty and snared him with her mind, and he had dutifully avoided temptation. He’d thought selfishly that she would wait for him until the time was right, but he could not blame her for her impatience. Beautiful as she was, she deserved a young man whose heart was not stitched up halfheartedly with still-festering wounds. His was a burden to carry alone, and he had no right to hope that she would love him, much as he desired it.
Eliot leaned out, hypnotized by the darkness of the frozen river below. The only way to stop a river from running was to freeze the water in it. But under the ice he could still see the dark water roiling, turbulent. He felt lost, an outsider here as he was in America, an expatriate returning to a country that had long forgotten his place. How could he run away from the trouble that Brynn had brought about in his heart?
He had already run away from his homeland once. He did not know if he could escape the pain again.
I woke early in my room, guilt churning my stomach. The thin sun coming in through the windowpane reflected off of the motes of dust hanging in the air. They twinkled like snowflakes as soft invisible currents of air tumbled them. They turned randomly in my vision, but I was filled with a sense of purpose even as guilty thoughts invaded my mind. Today was special, not just another day.
Today was the day I would go to visit my mother’s grave.
Watching the sunlight twirl circles in the room, I felt detached from yesterday and all that had happened. I hadn’t meant to do whatever I had done that led to Mark’s kiss. Every step taken up until that point had been so normal that when he kissed me I did not know what I could have done to take it back, were I to do it over again. It had felt strange—his lips pressed against mine in the joy of discovery, nervous and desiring. Not anything like Eliot’s possessive and confident embraces And then he had looked at me expectantly.
I recoiled at the memory. Pleading sleepiness, I’d escaped from Mark’s company at last, but not before he had tried to get me to talk about it. I didn’t want to talk about anything just then—I had seen the look on Eliot’s face, and it had hit me like a punch to the stomach. That I could wound someone in that way was unthinkable, but his expression made it clear that my ill-timed embrace with Mark had not gone unnoticed. And Mark’s insistent glances only made me sicker to my stomach that I would have to hurt him too. I loved Mark as an intellectual equal and a friend, but no romantic feelings had ever turned my heart toward him, not even now after we had shared a kiss. Indeed, even remembering it made me feel uncomfortable and itchy under my skin.#p#分页标题#e#
How could I explain to Mark that I didn’t share his feelings? I had known unrequited love, but it had always been from the other side. Cute boys I crushed on would dismiss me without a second thought, or worse, insult me with pity. Knowing how terrible rejection felt, I didn’t want to hurt Mark, but I most definitely didn’t want to lead him on either.