She walked up. I wasn’t prepared for her arrival. And yet, there she was – leaning at my door, from the yesteryears, like a familiar but forgotten memory, one hand holding a camera, the other on her waist, asking me if she can come in. I let her. And with the falling night in the backdrop, she began talking, unrolling the reels, one month at a time – and I was transported to the New York of the late 1930s.
Katherine Kontent wasn’t the usual heroine – she was a friend. Like me, she loved looking back to the years fondly; not because the years brought everything good and positive, but because they were instrumental in making her, the person she eventually became. As cinematic as it may appear, Katey refused to be the stereotypical girl – she became one who befriended a reserved, handsome stranger on a new year’s eve only to secure a lifelong with him, one who was taken under the wing by a revered figure in publishing only to be elevated to head his firm, one who fell in love with a vagabond only to realize later he was the worthiest suitor, one who stumbled upon a grunge-board brother of an ex flame who would become her best friend, one who was regaled by one of the city’s grandees to only become her most trusted aide, one who experienced a love-hate relationship with her bestie only to bury the hatchet in the end.
Most journeys that we love to narrate, and re-narrate, are those where we came alive – with a teeming joy or with a choking reminiscence, with a soaring triumph or with a reverberating discovery. Katey’s felt like belonging to this legion of journeys. When she lit up like the Canopus on Towles’ picturesque Manhattan sky of vignettes, part monochrome – part sepia, but endowed with meaning and music, I stood by the window and drunk my share of nostalgia. Because really, how many of us can rewind the time and not find a dried flower in a school bag or a note in a satchel or a lighter in a jeans pocket or a tattered letter in a compass box?
The book held my hand and took me to my Tinker and Eve. And when together, Katey and I returned to this world, leaving our dear ones behind the doors of civility, we were content. To know we have someone precious to always go back to, even if ephemerally, is to have a thing of great succor, and in Towles’ deft hands, the thought just finds the prettiest dance shoes.
Go on, shake a leg. In Manhattan. Or elsewhere. Any place, where you belong.
SEEMITA DAS 