“Surely you must. We traveled together in the same train, in the same compartment. You got on, wait a moment, what station was that …”
“That can’t be. I came here by car.”
“By car?” I wasn’t exactly surprised so much as troubled. “But you were sitting opposite me, in the seat next to the door. You had a large black suitcase. I was going to help you put it up on the shelf, but somebody else got there first.”
“I’m sorry. I never travel by train. I can’t stand trains. Coming here by train would have been too much for me. That hopeless space rushing past outside the window. Besides, I have unpleasant associations with trains.”
She had shaken my confidence a little. Yet I didn’t believe her. I sensed that she recognized me, that she was sure it was me. Perhaps she was only playing a game, the rules of which I didn’t know. Or protecting herself from something. What, though?
“But you remember that a few days ago I was sitting on a bench in the park smoking a cigarette. You came up and asked if you could join me because you also felt like smoking.”
She burst out laughing:
“I don’t smoke! Never did. You really do have me mixed up with someone else.”
“What? You mean you don’t remember?” I refused to give up. “You said that no one else on any of the benches was smoking. As you left you thanked me.”
“Perhaps after all you’d be so kind as to ask the waitress to come over,” she said with a hint of impatience. “I’d like to have my cake, then take myself off your hands.”
She gave me no hope. I wondered if I shouldn’t turn the whole thing into a joke, say, I’m sorry, I was just kidding. Sometimes I like to see how someone will react in certain situations. But there was no doubt in my mind that it was her. I beckoned the waitress, who had just reappeared. She came up to the table.
“We’d like to see what cakes you have.”
She returned a moment later with a tray of cakes. As she held it in front of us, I asked:
“Which one would you like?”
Her eyes filled with an almost childlike delight at the sight of the cakes.
“Which do you recommend?”
I suggested the one that I usually took.
“You won’t hold it against me if I pick a different one?”
And she did. So I asked for the same one she selected. At that point she seemed to get it, a moment of musing flashed in her eyes. She smiled, though her smile seemed artificial. With a similarly artificial nonchalance, as she ate her cake with relish, she said casually:
“I’m so grateful you let me sit at your table. I had such a craving for cake today.”
“And that particular kind,” I added.
“How did you know? You couldn’t know, since you suggested a different one.”
“Out of contrariness,” I said. “Just like out of contrariness you refuse to remember that we shared a train compartment, that you sat down next to me on a bench in the park to have a cigarette. And wherever else we might have met before, you’d deny it, I know. Even if I told you you’d appeared to me in a dream, you’d deny that too, you’d say it wasn’t possible.”
“Now that, that’s possible, though it’s corny.”
“But how is it possible, since you claim we’ve never met before?”
“Maybe that’s the only way you could have remembered me.” She looked at me with a fixed gaze, as if the life had suddenly gone out of her eyes. For a moment we stared at one another in this way, till her smile began to return.
“You know, I think that today of all days I’ll allow myself another cake.” She signaled to the waitress. When the latter came back with the tray of cakes, she first had me choose. Then she asked for the same kind that I picked. “You see what a pig I’m being?” she said. “I really shouldn’t. I never let myself have more than one … It’s all because of you. You’re awful. If only I’d known …” She glared at me in a mock sulk, and I saw something like a hint of alarm in her eyes. But she immediately said: “Whenever I can’t resist something, I always regret it later. I’ll have to punish myself for the second cake.”
“Punish yourself? What will your punishment be?”
“I haven’t decided yet. I’ll think of something. Oh, I know. If I come here again I’ll just order tea or coffee, I won’t have any cake at all. I’ll teach myself a lesson so I remember in the future.” She began almost savoring her self-imposed punishment. “Or no, I won’t have tea or coffee either. I’ll have them bring me a glass of water. Or I’ll be even harsher. I’ll order a cake, but I won’t eat it. I’ll leave it. Or two cakes. Yes, that’s it, two cakes, as if I were expecting someone else. And since the other person won’t come, I’ll leave both cakes uneaten.” She started to laugh, as if the punishment she was going to inflict on herself amused her greatly. “I mean, you yourself said a moment ago that we’re always expecting someone, we just don’t always know it. This way I’ll at least know. Two cakes, and I’ll leave both of them.”
I was on the point of telling her that she shouldn’t punish herself at all, what was one extra cake, it wasn’t going to hurt her. She was slim. When she came into the cafe and was standing there looking for a free table, it even struck me that she looked like an Easter palm branch. But I realized she might not know what an Easter palm branch is, and I asked if she wouldn’t like some tea or coffee, apologizing for not having thought of it before.
“No, no thank you,” she said, still laughing. “It’d spoil the taste of the cake. I never drink tea or coffee with cake, not ever.” Laughing all the time, she reached for a paper napkin. As she did so, the sleeve of her blouse pulled back and under the hem of her cuff, above the wrist, about here or a bit higher, I caught a glimpse of numbers written on her skin as if in ink or indelible pencil. It lasted a split second. She snatched a napkin from the stand on the table and pulled down her sleeve before she put the napkin to her lips.
I ought not to have noticed it, because you shouldn’t notice everything, especially a man looking at a woman. Even in themselves people don’t always like everything. There are many things we’d like to change in ourselves. We’re at odds with many things in ourselves. We’d like to improve things in ourselves, as we would in others. But since that isn’t possible, you must admit that at least it’s less troublesome when we don’t notice it. But she evidently saw that I’d noticed, and felt obliged to say:
“Oh, that’s from when I was just a child.” She was embarrassed, or perhaps unsettled, because her eyes turned away to look around the cafe. Only after a moment did she return to her cake, taking a tiny piece on the tip of her spoon. “You know what I used to dream of most often as a child?” she said, holding the spoon at her mouth. “Of one day eating my fill of cake.”
I laughed. It must have seemed insincere, because no shadow of a smile appeared on her face.
“I never imagined that when my dream could come true, I’d have to deny myself the pleasure.” Once again her eyes drifted away to the cafe, she stared at something or other, and when she went back to eating her cake, or rather picking at it, her gaze seemed buried in her plate. All at once she livened up and, clearly looking for a fight, she declared: “I have to say the first cake, the one I chose, was better.”
We began to argue about which was the better cake, the one she’d selected or my one. And you know what it means to argue about cake. It was like we were debating something of the utmost importance. Like it was ourselves we were submitting to a test, not just some cake. In this way we got onto the topic of the best cake we’d ever eaten in our lives. It was mostly her who remembered which cake and when and where, and each one was the most delicious. Even though the previous one had been the most delicious, the next one was even better, and the one after that was so delicious it canceled out all the preceding ones. I even tried to picture her as the child whose dream was being fulfilled, because she was thoroughly engrossed in remembering all those best cakes.