Fare Forward Read online

  I nod, unable to coax any words out of my mouth. I feel his eyes on me, and think about what he has just said. "What exactly is it, that you do in your travels?"

  He takes a step back, away from me. It's as if I have wounded him.

  His eyes change, and I can see his jaw set in a resolve I have not seen before. "You, Gabriella, are a much more interesting topic." He turns his head away for a moment then moves the conversation away from the intimacy of my questions to a safer subject.

  Architecture.

  "This design project you are working on is quite a challenge."

  I don't want to give up. I want answers from him. "How did you come to be on our jury today?"

  "The dean is a friend of mine. We spent several years in Paris working together and given the scientific nature of the project, he thought I would be interested in seeing what ideas the students had."

  "I see." But I can't seem to reconcile this new information. Dean Zumi and Benjamin have been together in Paris? The age difference between the two of them is too dramatic for that to be true. Benjamin must be in his early thirties, at most, and the dean was an established architect with grandchildren in the university. Another mystery. Never good at concealing my emotions, the confusion on my face betrays me.

  He takes a step toward me, his eyes burn into mine. "Time is a funny thing, Gabriella. The past, present, and future are linked in more ways than people realize, but you know this."

  I turn away from him, and wonder how he can know my inner thoughts, things that I have shared with no one. I feel the rushing, pounding feeling I get in my head after standing up too quickly.

  "Gabriella." His words pull me back. "After being in the review all day you must be hungry." He eyes me suspiciously, a mischievous look in his eye. Something seems funny to him and he tries to conceal a smile. I have the distinct feeling that the humor is at my expense. My appetite a personal trademark.

  "Starving, actually." I'm embarrassed.

  He laughs and shakes his head. "I thought so. Why don't you look around, and I'll come find you. I will see if there's anything in the kitchen."

  "Yes, fine."

  I know that everything here is a clue, a map to the mystery of who he is. I continue to explore and am drawn to the massive glass staircase. My hand moves up the railing that is wrapped in a soft velvet slipcover, designed to protect fingers from the cold metal. I marvel at the incredible attention to detail, where every sense is considered. At the top of the staircase is a huge glass skylight. The stars and sky are framed by the structure of the glass form, a perfect composition that brings moonlight into the core of the building. The beauty that surrounds me takes my breath away.

  Through a large wall of windows, I see boxwood hedges that frame a beautiful pool, casting a blue light that illuminates the terrace in an outer-worldly way. Music plays through speakers hidden in the walls of every room. It sounds similar to the piano solo I remember from the cathedral. The haunting sound that had imprinted in my head, another element of the unforgettable day when I met him there. I continue to walk slowly through the spaces, trying to absorb everything I am seeing, while at the same time, feeling a sense of familiarity that is unexplainable. Suddenly I find myself facing a most unexpected sight.

  It is my painting.

  The one that had sold recently at the gallery in SoHo, reconfirming through the unnecessary checklist of identification that it is mine. The conversation I had with the gallery owner when he called to tell me of the sale floods my mind.

  "I can't believe the piece sold so quickly after the opening," I had said, trying to absorb the large sum I would be receiving. A first for me. "Who bought it?" I asked, realizing that one of my paintings was now in the possession of someone I did not know. A strange concept—that my art could have a life of its own.

  "The purchase was made through an intermediary. This particular buyer was quite insistent. He wanted to retain absolute anonymity."

  * * *

  30

  * * *

  I CAN REMEMBER FEELING shock and discomfort, uncertainty about the anonymous sale of my painting, but had been assured that this was fairly common in the art world. I accepted the gallery owner's rationale as the happiness that I had sold a piece quickly outweighed any concerns I had.

  "Bloody hell, Gabriella," Philip had tried to reassure me at the time. "You don't need to figure everything out. Now you can join those of us not destined to be starving artists."

  "Speak for yourself, Philip, I have no clue where my destiny is taking me."

  And now here it was. In Benjamin's home.

  I am so taken aback, that I am pulled into the small room where it hangs on the far wall. I move slowly, feeling that I am entering his private office. The furnishings are a mix of classics, of modern design, and beautiful antiques, icons from the last several hundred years. Dark wood shelves are covered from floor to ceiling with books, photographs, art, and leather-bound files alphabetized by geographic area.

  My hand brushes along the surface of the shelves as I tilt my head to read the titles. There is an amazing combination of contemporary works and antique volumes in German, French, Italian, English, and Russian. I notice a large section in Latin: poetry, history, and—strangely—various texts on Kabbalah.

  The massive glass desk at the center of the room is covered with papers of mathematical equations and several flat-screen computers. I am reminded of the day I had stumbled into his room in Hamilton Hall. I can't take my eyes away from the shapes and numbers that keep inverting and twisting into themselves across the LCD display of the computer monitors, new forms emerging and morphing from the last. These images are unlike any I have ever seen, letters and numbers arranged in strange three dimensional configurations.

  I stop suddenly.

  I know that I am not alone and that he has come into the room. I turn around slowly and see him leaning against the door frame.

  "I saw my painting. I didn't know who had bought it. It was you."

  I want to explain why I had come into his library, the force that had drawn me in. He is not angry. It's as if my standing here in this room, in his home where my painting is hanging, is the most normal thing in the world.

  I try to remember to breathe. I am once again completely arrested by his presence. His easy way of standing, hands in the pockets of his pants, and his eyes as he watches me.

  "Your paintings are very beautiful. I had to have this one, here, with me," he says but provides no explanation, no details of when or how he had bought it.

  Nothing.

  I choose to change the subject. To something more manageable. At least for the moment. "You have so many interesting things here, so many books." I turn away from his eyes, buying a few seconds to steady my heart. I think about the many years I have spent alone reading everything I could find, using books as my own companions—my guide. Hoping to find my answers.

  "Yes, they help me understand things. Especially the way people think and look at their world. Some of the theories are quite interesting." He seems to find humor in a memory.

  "Your work." I force myself to concentrate and formulate the sentence as it emerges from my mouth. "What is it that you are looking for, exactly?" I need to understand somehow who he is and how he knows my grandfather. The many emotions that are rushing through me all at once are completely disorienting.

  "What everyone is trying to find answers to, Gabriella." He looks at the sky outside the window, then slowly turns back to me. "The nature of the universe."

  "I know that my grandfather has been trying his entire life—with science and mathematics that is—to find the unexplainable, what he has called 'the Infinite,'" I continue cautiously. "He wants to bridge the gap, he says, between science and metaphysics."

  "Your grandfather has devoted himself to an ideal, Gabriella. The belief that science can approach an explanation for the previously unexplainable."

  "Yes." I say it with caution. I am still trying to reconcile t
he mystery of how Benjamin seems to be so intimately connected to my grandfather's thoughts and how much he knows. "His life has been consumed by the belief in his work, always searching for the things that transcend time."

  "Profound understanding through scientific proof." The words Benjamin chooses sound amazingly similar to those my grandfather would have selected. A coincidence not lost on me.

  "Einstein," I say quietly.

  If he knows anything about my grandfather, then he must have known the intimate connection he had to Einstein. One of the pivotal relationships in his life. Benjamin pauses, as if he is trying to decide in which direction to continue. He is somber. "Einstein himself admitted the inconsistencies in time. He said that if anything could travel faster than light it would be possible to hop backward in time, Gabriella," he says this as if he had known the great scientist personally.

  "So many years of research. It's incredible how he has been able to stay so focused on his goal, despite," I say and pause for a moment, "everything that has happened." My parents, my grandmother. I think about the many times I had seen him in his library, holding his head in his hands.

  "He will find his answers. If he hasn't already."

  I look up at Benjamin and our eyes meet.

  "His critics say that he's moved to the very fringes of the scientific community, but he has never lost his faith in his ideals and his conviction, in what he believes to be true."

  "His heart is enormous." Benjamin's voice is low. "Like yours."

  I don't know how to respond to the intimacy of his words, the solitary mention of my heart. "My grandfather is completely fearless."

  I turn away and think about him alone at the beach house, the years he has spent searching for answers.

  "And you, Gabriella, what is it that you are afraid of?" he says the words as he approaches and turns me toward him.

  "Me? I'm afraid of being nothing, doing nothing. Having my life not mean anything."

  "That's impossible," he says.

  "How do you know?"

  "I just do."

  * * *

  31

  * * *

  I NEED TO TURN AWAY from him. Not only because of the things he is saying, but now the subtle pressure building in my head, the familiar sensation of how it always begins. And then, it happens.

  I see it all so clearly. I see her. My grandmother. She's standing in a cave, lit from above, talking to someone about what she was looking for—answers to her questions, our family's mystical origins. But I force myself away from the vision and pick up a small frame from Benjamin's desk and say, "This looks quite old, what is it?"

  "It's an archaeological site, Palestine, under the British Mandate. Some very interesting work was being done in the Judean Desert."

  "My grandmother was there."

  "Yes," he says so softly that I almost don't hear him, "I know."

  "I don't understand, how could you know?"

  "Your grandfather—" He catches himself as the words come out. "He told me." Benjamin tries to clarify. "That was when they first met."

  "He told you about that?" I'm surprised.

  "He loves to speak about his work with Einstein, their years of correspondence, and, of course, the excitement of the Nobel Prize. That time when they traveled to Jerusalem lives in all of our memories."

  "I don't understand. How could you possibly . . ." My words trail off.

  He turns away suddenly, caught revealing something he should not have. A truth in his words that somehow cannot be suppressed.

  The silence is making me uncomfortable, so I continue, "My family, I mean my parents, used to live there. In a small town in the north. A very special, magical place but—I have not been back for many years."

  He looks at me with sadness, admiration, and other things I am afraid to acknowledge. Given everything he has already revealed, I assume he knows that my parents are gone. That they too were looking for their own answers. That I had been unable to return to Zefat since the terrible incident that had taken them away from me. They had devoted their lives to the study of Kabbalah and the Zohar, the text at the center of the mystical writings. It seemed surreal to be standing here talking to him about the exceptionally personal intersections of my life. My grandfather's research in science and my parents' passionate commitment to understanding mysticism.

  "There is an amazing connection, Gabriella, between Einstein and ancient mysticism." He looks right at me. "In the way they are both trying to understand the nature of time and man's place in the universe."

  I know that these ideas are at the very core of what has consumed my grandfather.

  "The line of our life, my grandfather says, traverses time and space."

  "It's not only the line of our life that can live on into the future and past, but other things as well. You have experienced this, haven't you?"

  "Sometimes I feel like I've already lived my whole life. Like I've done it before," I answer.

  He smiles. "That's because you know how to link to a part of the world where there is infinite information." He takes a few steps toward me. "To find light in the darkness."

  I am stunned by what he has just said, the words my grandmother had used so many times. I had heard enough.

  "Who are you?" I am overwhelmed and confused. "Answer me. Please. How do you know these things about my family. About me?"

  He spins away and stops then slams his hands against the wall. I watch as he runs both hands through his hair, places them on his waist, and turns slowly back to me. I know he is deciding what to do next. He looks down at the floor and speaks very softly. "I'm sorry, Gabriella, I should not have brought you here." He looks like he's in pain.

  "What?" I start to object. "Why are you saying this? I don't understand!"

  "I've tried; I wanted to stay away from you. But it's impossible."

  I am stunned by his words and yet, somehow, I know what he means. I feel the same way. The overwhelming powerful force between us is a fact neither of us can deny.

  "It's impossible for me to stay away," he says again. "I cannot."

  He walks toward me, his eyes locked on mine. My hand reaches down to hold the side of the massive glass desk to steady myself. I feel the room start to spin. All I know is that everything I am feeling is what I want. I need him, to be with him, in every way possible. The intensity of the burning desire is unlike anything I have ever experienced.

  And then, I do something I have never done before. I say it.

  "I want to be with you, too."

  He crosses the room and stands inches away from me; the invisible energy field between us almost pushing me over. "Do you believe in the possibility that love can transcend time?" His voice is low in his throat. His eyes are intense as they search mine.

  "Why are you here?" I ask.

  "Gabriella—"

  "What are you doing to me? I feel you taking me, pulling me into the past. Into my future." The insane range of emotions I am feeling has stolen my vocabulary, the rational world that I had tried to live in feels like it is slipping away. But it doesn't matter. I know that anything I would say at this moment will be completely inadequate.

  Slowly, his hands reach out for my face. "We are all trying to find the things that are unchanging, Gabriella. Beyond ourselves and beyond time."

  I feel his hands on the back of my neck and in my hair. As his face moves closer to mine, I inhale him; I feel the heat of his body. I want to dissolve into him.

  He reaches out and pulls me in with a force I have not felt before.

  "So many mysteries have lived in my heart."

  "I know," he whispers.

  "But you're here. It's you."

  The moment his lips cover mine I know I have finally found the answer. It's as if a veil of darkness is being pulled away from the shadowed spaces in my life. Everything I have gone through has prepared me for this moment. I realize in this very instant that together, with him, I am completing myself—I become whole. Without him, I
would never be.

  He is what I have been searching for.

  I remembered the words my grandmother whispered, which I carried deep in my heart.

  You will find the love that was made for you.

  She knew, and, now, so did I. Changing the direction of my life, with the promise of his kiss.

  * * *

  32

  * * *

  TIME IS NOW MEASURED differently since the day of the architecture review and the incredible hours I spent with Benjamin. The walk, the dinner, and the night that I know has altered the course of my life. It is almost impossible to concentrate on my classes, yet I force myself to try, relying on the rhythm and demands of my life.

  Time moves forward, marked by nature's transformation. Leaves fall and are swept away, leaving the expression of the tree's architecture. It is an explosively beautiful fall in New York, yet my mind keeps returning to him. My feet feel as if they are each planted on separate plates of the earth, riding through the seismic shifting of my moods and thoughts, and I simply can't stop thinking about him. The intimacy of our evening together and the strange feeling that, somehow, I have known him forever. Whatever equilibrium I had barely found has been completely rocked by his presence. There is a caution, even resistance, on his part and an evasiveness when describing his frequent absences and travel schedule. Yet the way I feel when he is near me is something I want. More, always, forever.

  Emily, ever mindful of the more public part of my life, keeps a watchful eye. The phone vibrates in my pocket, and I welcome the excuse to leave the lecture hall I'm in to get outside and talk to her. Clear my head.

  I hear Emily's worried voice on the other end. "Gabriella? Hi, where are you? Are you in class? What time is he coming?"