I read the book in the shop, after closing, with the lights off. I read it in Czech first. Everything I felt, I felt first in Czech, where the word for what I have been married to three times is — there is no word. In Czech you say krásný and it means beautiful and it means nothing. Four languages. No word.
Budapest. The hardcover was heavy in my hands — cloth binding frayed at the corners, the page yellow under the lamp. I was reading about a river in Portugal that changes direction twice a year. The name of the river — it was Portuguese, it started with —
She was in the doorway. I knew at seven seconds. I knew her face would be asking the question. I did not look up.
I chose the sentence. The sentence was about reversal — water going back. I chose the sentence over the doorway and the sentence was worth it for exactly its own length and not one second longer.
The name of the river. It started with — no. It is gone.
Lisbon. A Wednesday. She was shelving Travel Guides: South America. I was shelving a guide to the Azores. She walked past me and touched the back of my neck — two fingers, briefly.
The way you touch a book's spine to check if it is the one you are looking for.
She found what she was looking for. Or I decided she had, because a man who chose a paragraph over a doorway needs the two fingers to have meant what he thinks they meant. I have built a marriage on that uncertainty. The third wedding was that Wednesday. The touch. The shop smelled of old paper. Neither of us said anything.
The river — Portuguese — the name was two syllables — I have carried the paragraph for twenty years and the name is
The flood. February. A pipe burst overnight and by morning there were two inches of water in the shop. The books on the bottom shelves — Geography, Memoir, the section where ours is filed — were soaked. I was standing in the water holding a soggy guide to Morocco, laughing. Mariana was on the stairs with her shoes off. Kev was mopping with the conviction of someone who has been right about something important.
The water was between Geography and Memoir. The book was on the shelf between Geography and Memoir. Where it belongs.
The flood was honest. Honest is what I have instead of krásný. Honest is what I have instead of the word.
The name of the river. I have lost it again. It was Portuguese. It changed direction. It went back.
I promised presence. I am present. Standing in two inches of water in a bookshop in Lisbon, holding a soggy guide, laughing — because the flood is honest, and the books are in the wrong order, and Mariana's feet are bare on the stairs, and the river whose name I cannot — the river that goes back — the river —
It is gone. The paragraph remains.
— Viktor
Maps of Elsewhere, Lisbon. The books are settling. The water is finding its level.
P.S. Dmitri kept my letter about the unreliability of personal narrative. This is the first reliable thing that has happened to an unreliable narrative. I am moved. In Czech the word is — no. Not this time. I am moved.