Not knowing how to react to what Bob had been pontificating about, they all sat there in silence for a moment. But then Margarita came out of the house, carrying two large plates of fish toward the table, which lightened the mood. Everyone started talking, commenting upon, refuting, or supporting Bob’s bombastic story.
Sasha yelled, “That’s right, Bob. People are the same everywhere, and it doesn’t really matter who you share your hopes and wine with—a Surinamese woman or an Ethiopian one. But an Ethiopian woman would be better.” Maria, speaking quietly, argued that family is the most important thing in life, and it’s better to leave anything going on outside the family to other people. Pasha Chingachgook agreed with her, while Kira shook her head dissentingly and described the acts of betrayal people are prone to, and the oblivion that enters us and fills us up. Alla ran with the part about oblivion, saying that it doesn’t matter how much it fills you up—it’s no match for the exhilaration of new love.
“That’s right,” Luke suddenly added. He’d been sitting there in silence the whole time, listening intently to the others.
Everyone got very quiet all of a sudden, apparently remembering what had brought them together. There was an intimate yet solemn air about the whole gathering. The light coming off the deck was drowning in the leaves and capturing the men’s heavy hands and the women’s reserved faces. Luke sat at the corner of the table; the falling shadows made his features sharp, his wrinkles deep. Bloody drops of wine faded into his beard. John was on his left and Zurab on his right. They were listening to him but not looking at him. Luke waited for complete silence to set in and then continued,
“What you said is absolutely right. Oblivion doesn’t matter. And death doesn’t matter either.”
“Death doesn’t exist!” Sasha Tsoi yelled boldly.
“Death does exist. You can’t even imagine how close to us it is. But that’s not what I’m getting at. Our death, our disappearance, and our passage to the kingdom of the dead don’t have any real significance because they’re all inevitable. After all, it would be silly to reject the lunar cycle, or the natural course of a river. You have to take it as a given and accept it peacefully, like all inexorable forces. The only thing that actually holds any significance is love, both exhilarating new love and the enduring love we keep inside, the love we carry with us, and the love with which we live. You never know how much is allotted to you, how much you have, or how much is yet to come. Finding it brings great happiness; losing it causes great misery and vexation. We all live in this strange city; we all stuck around, we’ll all come back sooner or later. We live, bearing this love like guilt, like our memory that contains all of our experiences and all of our knowledge, and its presence in our breath, on the roofs of our mouths, is what makes life so riveting. Every morning when I wake up, I think of all the women I’ve been blessed to meet and know—all those cheerful and unsettled, carefree and helpless, virginal and pregnant women. I’d say my exchanges with them have always been the most important thing for me, my ability or inability to share love, whether new or enduring, with them. Everything else was a consequence of falling in love, so it had no meaning, no significance on its own. So there’s no sense talking about anything else. That’s all I have to say, now it’s time to go for a swim!”
That’s what everyone did. Our boisterous crew started spilling out into the yard, thanking the host for his words, remarking that they were wise, though perhaps a little overloaded with passion. Somebody grabbed a bottle of wine, some others used their phones as flashlights to guide us down the path toward the riverbank. She got up from the table, too, and started gathering up empty plates.
“Ya coming?”
“You run along with everyone else,” she said, gently waving me off. “I’m gonna help clean up. I’ll be down soon.”
I stood still for a bit, then turned around, set off into the darkness, crossed the street, passed under some trees, and popped out by the river. Clothes and empty bottles were scattered along the bank; from the depths of the evening air, somewhere in that damp black space, I could hear laughing and shrieking, giddy splashing and confident strokes through the current. Women’s bodies shone dimly in the silver moonlight and drunken exclamations made everything warm and cheerful. I recognized them, standing there on the riverbank, calling their names right into the blackness. Their answers came back; they approached me or drifted toward the opposite bank. It sounded as though the river had carried all the voices, all the laughter, and all the songs I knew from the city out here, which steadied me and put me at ease. Everything was right here, just a few steps away. None of this could disappear—it wouldn’t end as long as I stood there, no matter how much time passed.
But they gradually started getting out of the water—some of them quickly snatched their clothes and pulled them over their wet bodies, while the more foresighted among them dried off with the towels they’d brought, and some other swimmers simply polished off the bottles, grabbed some clothes at random, and plodded toward the yard, back into the light. It was getting late. I heard someone saying goodbye to the host and someone else starting to sing; a certain bitterness tinged the voices of the women and a fire ignited in those of the men. Cars pulled away. The voices went silent. It got very quiet. There was more moon; there was more coolness in the air.
I didn’t hear her coming at all. She simply appeared behind me and touched my shoulder gently.
“Well, what are you standing here for?” she asked.
At first, I didn’t know what to say. She slipped out of the jacket she’d borrowed from someone or other, shed her sweater, kicked off her sneakers, and struggled with her overalls for a bit, but eventually got out of them, too. She pulled off her T-shirt, hesitated for a split second, tossed her underwear on top of the warm pile of clothes, and stepped into the water, fearfully groping for the bottom of the river with her toes. Then she squealed giddily, dove into the water, and swam out a little bit.
“Hey,” she yelled from the darkness, “aren’t you comin’?”
“You go ahead and swim,” I answered. “I’ll watch your things.”
“Whatever you say.”
I thought, “It’s so good to finally find myself here, on this bank, by this water, just standing and watching her undress and step into the river, knowing that you can wade into any river forever. You can hang on to the wet air that enfolds you—you can hold on to it forever; you can wait for everyone you have known and loved to return—you can wait forever. The river will bring you all the different inflections you’ve heard, the river will conserve all the warmth you’ve left behind; rivers know how to wait, rivers know how to start anew. Riverbeds abide, currents abide. Nobody can stop this whole mass of damp light, this heap of warmth and cold. All I can do is wait for her, here on the riverbank, and return with her to the city, like the thousands of refugees and migrant workers, sojourners and newcomers, all those crews of manual laborers who roam the earth building towers and prisons, but eventually come here, sooner or later, to these riverbanks, lit by these moon rays.”