two legs (he told me that in Italy he sometimes worked as a gigolo, servicing mostly older American women whom he, startling me with a sudden command of the English language, described as succubi), but I churlishly wanted more in the way of intellectual stimulation. I wanted to share ideas. When I was about to return to Toronto, he had asked for my address, and I gave it to him, not really thinking he would write. But he did.
The letters came in a trickle at first. Then, after I once wrote back, mostly from guilt, they arrived in a torrent of love-soaked words. He declared eternal devotion. He called me his angel on earth. He said he was waiting for me. I thought that silly. I had no intention of running back to him. But as my life as hard-nosed journalist began to rapidly unfold, taking me farther away from my dream of becoming an artist, I began to look forward to those passionate missives from abroad, even taking them with me into the newsroom where I would read them quietly, in the midst of all that tumult, and think of the path not taken. My life had become complicated, weighed down by consumer products and pursuits. His world, by contrast, had stayed simple, true to some eternal truth. He signed his letters âloveâ and, on the back, often sketched some ancient Italian vistaâruins amid the cypress trees. Meanwhile my editor shouted for his copy. The phone wouldnât stop ringing. Was this it? The rest of my life? I refolded the letter, delicate as tissue, and put it back into my purse. Love. It wasnât a word spoken of much at the newspaper. Love. It made me yearn for something more.
I knew I couldnât tell anyone about Stefano, my phantom lover. My friends would just laugh. Me. The academic turned careerist. Willing to throw it all away, and for a stud. But secrets arenât secrets if you canât share them with at least one person. I chose my pair of ears, perhaps not so wisely. I told my mother. Her response wasnât at all what I expected. She urged me to go after him. She told me I was crazy not to. Those letters are so beautiful, she said. A gift. She was smitten by the Tarzan-like idea of him, the pretty sketches. Said I was lucky, that I ought to cherish what he was offering me, because it was rare in this cut-throat world of ours. âWish it were me,â she said. At that time, there were no romantics in her corner. She was back to having affairs with married men. âSafer,â she told me. âNo strings attached.â She persuaded me to give my long-distance affair a chance, in order to avoid becoming like her. January 1986 marked my first-year anniversary at the paper. It was also the month I turned twenty-six. For my birthday my mother squeezed a little money into my hand for a ticket to see him. âGo,â she urged me. âFind love.â
I sent a telegram, telling Stefano I would be coming to see him. He had moved back to Zurich and, in a telegram back, suggested I meet him there, in his hometown. He had a real job now, working in a home for the mentally challenged, feeding them, dressing them, wheeling them through gardens. A life of charity. But I didnât want to know any more about that. This was a quest for romance. I didnât want to go to a city that seemed unsympathetic to that spirit. I wanted to go to Paris, the city that to me most symbolized beauty and desire.
I still imagined I would one day live there. I hadnât given up on that dream, despite landing a full-time job in Toronto right out of university. The Globe and Mail didnât have a Paris office. But I imagined that it might. With the economy continuing to improve, the paper was in the midst of opening up a number of new foreign bureaus. I had let my editor know of my interest in Paris. He in turn told me about the Journalistes en Europe fellowship program, enabling foreign journalists to study mass communication at the Sorbonne for a year. This seemed custom-made
The letters came in a trickle at first. Then, after I once wrote back, mostly from guilt, they arrived in a torrent of love-soaked words. He declared eternal devotion. He called me his angel on earth. He said he was waiting for me. I thought that silly. I had no intention of running back to him. But as my life as hard-nosed journalist began to rapidly unfold, taking me farther away from my dream of becoming an artist, I began to look forward to those passionate missives from abroad, even taking them with me into the newsroom where I would read them quietly, in the midst of all that tumult, and think of the path not taken. My life had become complicated, weighed down by consumer products and pursuits. His world, by contrast, had stayed simple, true to some eternal truth. He signed his letters âloveâ and, on the back, often sketched some ancient Italian vistaâruins amid the cypress trees. Meanwhile my editor shouted for his copy. The phone wouldnât stop ringing. Was this it? The rest of my life? I refolded the letter, delicate as tissue, and put it back into my purse. Love. It wasnât a word spoken of much at the newspaper. Love. It made me yearn for something more.
I knew I couldnât tell anyone about Stefano, my phantom lover. My friends would just laugh. Me. The academic turned careerist. Willing to throw it all away, and for a stud. But secrets arenât secrets if you canât share them with at least one person. I chose my pair of ears, perhaps not so wisely. I told my mother. Her response wasnât at all what I expected. She urged me to go after him. She told me I was crazy not to. Those letters are so beautiful, she said. A gift. She was smitten by the Tarzan-like idea of him, the pretty sketches. Said I was lucky, that I ought to cherish what he was offering me, because it was rare in this cut-throat world of ours. âWish it were me,â she said. At that time, there were no romantics in her corner. She was back to having affairs with married men. âSafer,â she told me. âNo strings attached.â She persuaded me to give my long-distance affair a chance, in order to avoid becoming like her. January 1986 marked my first-year anniversary at the paper. It was also the month I turned twenty-six. For my birthday my mother squeezed a little money into my hand for a ticket to see him. âGo,â she urged me. âFind love.â
I sent a telegram, telling Stefano I would be coming to see him. He had moved back to Zurich and, in a telegram back, suggested I meet him there, in his hometown. He had a real job now, working in a home for the mentally challenged, feeding them, dressing them, wheeling them through gardens. A life of charity. But I didnât want to know any more about that. This was a quest for romance. I didnât want to go to a city that seemed unsympathetic to that spirit. I wanted to go to Paris, the city that to me most symbolized beauty and desire.
I still imagined I would one day live there. I hadnât given up on that dream, despite landing a full-time job in Toronto right out of university. The Globe and Mail didnât have a Paris office. But I imagined that it might. With the economy continuing to improve, the paper was in the midst of opening up a number of new foreign bureaus. I had let my editor know of my interest in Paris. He in turn told me about the Journalistes en Europe fellowship program, enabling foreign journalists to study mass communication at the Sorbonne for a year. This seemed custom-made
Similar Books
