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 he final time they made love, seven months before she killed herself and he married someone else, the Gypsy girl asked my grandfather how he arranged his books.
She had been the only one he returned to without having to be asked. They would meet at the bazaar — he would watch, with not only anticipation but pride, as she coaxed snakes from woven baskets with the tipsy music of her recorder. They would meet at the theatre or in front of her thatch-roofed shanty in the Gypsy hamlet on the other side of the Brod. (She, of course, could never be seen near his house.) They would meet on the wooden bridge, or beneath the wooden bridge, or by the small falls. But more often than not, they would end up in the petrified corner of Radziwell Forest, exchanging jokes and stories, laughing afternoons into evenings, making love — which might or might not have been love — under stone canopies.
Do you think I'm wonderful? she asked him one day as they leaned against the trunk of a petrified maple.
No, he said.
Why?
Because so many girls are wonderful. I imagine hundreds of men have called their loves wonderful today, and it's only noon. You couldn't be something that hundreds of others are.
Are you saying that I am not-wonderful?
Yes, I am.
She fingered his dead arm. Do you think I am not-beautiful?
You are incredibly not-beautiful. You are the farthest possible thing from beautiful.
She unbuttoned his shirt.
Am I smart?
No. Of course not. I would never call you smart.
She kneeled to unbutton his pants.
Am I sexy?
No.
Funny?
You are not-funny.
Does that feel good?
No.
Do you like it?
No.
She unbuttoned her blouse. She leaned in against him.
Should I continue?
She had been to Kiev, he learned, and Odessa, and even Warsaw. She had lived among the Wisps of Ardisht for a year when her mother became deathly ill. She told him of ship voyages she had taken to places he had never heard of, and stories he knew were all untrue, were bad not-truths, even, but he nodded and tried to convince himself to be convinced, tried to believe her, because he knew that the origin of a story is always an absence, and he wanted her to live among presences.
In Siberia, she said, there are couples who make love from hundreds of miles apart, and in Austria there is a princess who tattooed the image of her lover's body onto her body, so that when she looked in the mirror she would see him, and and and on the other side of the Black Sea is a stone woman — I have never seen it, but my aunt has — who came to life because of her sculptor's love!
Safran brought the Gypsy girl flowers and chocolates (all gifts from his widows) and composed poems for her, all of which she laughed at.
How stupid could you possibly be! she said.
Why am I stupid?
Because the easiest things for you to give are the hardest things for you to give. Flowers, chocolates, and poems don't mean anything to me.
You don't like them?
Not from you.
What would you like from me?
She shrugged her shoulders, not out of puzzlement but embarrassment. (He was the only person on earth who could embarrass her.)
Where do you keep your books? she asked.
In my room.
Where in your room?
On shelves.
How are your books arranged?
Why do you care?
Because I want to know.
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