An Unnecessary Woman (32 page)

Would Noah have allowed a lesbian zebra aboard, an unmarried hedgehog, a limping lemur? Methinks not.

Never has my city been welcoming of the unpaired or the impaired.

I never cared for the story of Noah or Edward Hicks’s stilted paintings of Stepford animals.

From what I read tonight in
Microcosms
: “Why so much pity for the murderers who came after and none for those before, drowned like rats? He should have known that together with every being—man or beast—evil entered the Ark.”

Say what you will about the God of Israel, but consistency is not His forte. He hasn’t been fair to my kind. The One God is a Nazi.

I sit in the dark. And it would be hard to figure out

which is worse: the dark inside, or the darkness out.

I must try to sleep tonight. I must.

Of course I don’t sleep. I don’t recall the entire night’s affair, so I may have dozed off a bit, my usual fare. I bend down to pull on woolen socks and feel every vertebra crack in order as if in a roll call: C1, here; C3, present; T4, yes; L5, I’m here; coccyx, ouch, ouch. All that’s missing is a reveille-playing bugle.

It is much too cold. A chilly tremor runs through my shoulders, chasing away any inclination to sluggishness. I scratch my scalp. Still shorn. I’m not sure I can risk the bathroom mirror this morning.

A night of storms and heavy rain, of bumps and sounds in the dark. I heard floods and sirens outside. Comfortably tucked under three blankets, I heard a ghoul scratch his fingernails on the windowpane, a militiaman fire his machine gun into street puddles. Above me, I heard Joumana murder someone, probably her husband, and drag the corpse around the house in circles over and over while hitting the skull with a Tefal frying pan. Nothing else could have made those night noises.

I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were
. . . warmer.

I wear my robe over my nightgown and top it off with the burgundy mohair overcoat. I trudge to the kitchen to begin my early morning tea ritual. The apartment smells of damp and rain. The radiators diffuse sputtering heat in spurts. Indoor winter winds interrogate my ankles.

I’m hesitating again about the new project. The novel
2666
, incomplete though it may be, is too big, and this morning it interests me less. However, I’m not sure I have enough time to come up with a new book to translate this late in the game unless I pick something short and easy. Can I risk missing the rite of beginning a translation on the first of January? I wonder if I’m able to break my own rules. The rules are arbitrary. I recognize that, but I also know that they make my life work; my rules get me through the day. If I have to, I can begin the translation on another date and the world will not reverse on its axis. I’ll not lose any more sleep than I already do if I postpone. Still, I prefer to stick to what I know, creature of habit and all that.

Maybe my epiphany is that I can begin a translation in the second week of January this time. Maybe this epiphany will excite me after I have my tea.

I light the flame under the kettle.

I decide that I must make a decision this morning about which book to work with. Uncertainty is unsettling.

Whispery light begins to disperse the shadowy forms outside my windows. A garbage truck leaves my street and takes its howling ruckus with it. Nothing to be heard now but the childish pitter-patter of rain. The streetlamp flickers its bulb in a short tantrum, gathering a blush of carnation pink and russet before turning off for the day. The air in the kitchen still feels somber and damp. I carry my tea to the reading room, sit in my armchair, and drape the quilt over my legs under the mohair coat.

My doorbell rings and I am disoriented. I must have fallen asleep in my chair. How long has it been since that happened? I can’t tell what time it is, can’t read the clock without my eyeglasses. The light is high. Eight o’clock? The doorbell buzzes once more. I put on my glasses. The cup remains on the side table, next to the vase and the seven books of the Muallaqat, the tea untouched and obviously cold, not a wisp of steam rising from its surface. I’ll not open the door. Not this time. I’ll not let the world in. Is this going to be a daily ritual? Let’s disturb Aaliya’s morning, jumble and upend it. Tous les matins du monde.

Whoever is outside knocks on my door, an insistent knock. It’s not my half brother the eldest, though. This knock is well mannered.

“Aaliya,” I hear Joumana’s muffled voice call from outside. There is urgency to her call. “Open up, please!”

I jump out of my chair—well, what would be considered a jump at my age. My knee buckles, almost sending me sprawling across the carpet. I steady myself at the reading room’s door. My hand leans against the jamb and I find myself face-to-face with the unframed circular mirror. I avert my eyes, of course, but I make a decision to clean it before the day is done, at least dust it off.

“She must be inside,” Marie-Thérèse says. “I didn’t hear her leave this morning. I’d know if she did.”

I rush to the door. I hear Fadia on the stairs, coming from below, not above. The world is upside down today, topsy-turvy.

“I’ve shut off the water,” says Fadia, the loudest of all. She has yet to reach my landing. I hear the hurried stomping of her clogs approaching.

“Aaliya!” she screams just as I open the door. My face encounters the full force of her voice, and of December’s cold.

The three wet witches jostle into my foyer, they speak together, all at the same time, high-pitched Disney-like chatter, and I’m flummoxed and confused. If Fadia’s housedress swept the floor the last time she was here, today her purple one mops it. The hem is so damp she looks as if she’s just waded out of a river. But I hear the word
flood
, and just above the bridge of my nose, just under the skin, I feel a nerve snap. A lump grows in my throat, an anchor weighs down my heart. I feel my ears shut off. I do not wish to hear.

Haphazardly soggy, the witches surround me, orbit me like planets on Dexedrine, talking, talking, talking. A water pipe—maid’s bathroom upstairs in Joumana’s apartment—flood—no danger anymore—plumber’s been called—they hope I don’t have anything valuable stored in my maid’s room.

Anything valuable? Valuable? My crates, my crates and crates, my life—they know nothing of that.

I run—yes, run—through the kitchen to the maid’s bathroom. I smell the damp before I open the door, like a woolen sweater in the rain, like the smell of Nancy’s damp pink sweater draped over the top of the heater, steaming, I’m steaming. Nausea punches my stomach from inside and out. The knob doesn’t turn all the way on the first try because my hands are too clammy. I swing the door open and witness the damage. The stink assaults me physically, and I recoil and stagger a step; the stench wallops me, bashes my nose, sour, musty, my mother. My heart behaves strangely, wishing to object. I feel an urge to regurgitate.

Hail horrors, hail

Infernal world! and thou, profoundest Hell.

My neighbors sidle up to me, too close.

There is some water on the floor, but not too much. Most of what has passed through the maid’s bathroom continued on its journey toward the swale of the drain. The water that insisted on remaining, though, chose to do so among my papers. Every crate is wet.

There’s no longer any need to panic. It is done.

If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well

It were done quickly.

It was most certainly quick.

On wobbly legs and exhausted knees, I walk through to the maid’s room. There is no hope. Dark though the maid’s room is, I need not see. The smell of water damage is acute. The seven mouths of the Nile have poured their wares in here. My soul screams, my voice is mute. I am now destitute.

Who among the angels will hear me if I cry? I stand in the dank and the dark, amid my wasted life, not knowing what to do, unable to make any decision, and weep. My hopes were extinguished a long while ago, and now any tinder of dignity follows suit. Whatever remains of my self-worth seeps out of me, flows out of me, and follows the water down the drain.

Everything has gone and left me and I don’t know what to do.

I face a battle that has been over for a long time. I accept defeat with no white flag to wave, with no strength even to unsheathe my sword.

Into the valley of Death

Rode the six hundred.

Degradation is my intimate. Like Job’s, my soul is weary of my life. Snot falls from my nostrils; I wipe it and the tears with the sleeve of my mohair coat—the sleeve of my tattered, unwearable coat.

I don’t know how much the three witches can see, but I’m horrified that they know I’m crying, which makes me cry more, and louder.

My soul is fate’s chew toy. My destiny pursues me like an experienced tracker, like a malevolent hunter, bites me and won’t let go. What I thought I left behind I find again. I’ll always be a failure, then, now, and forever. Fail again. Fail worse. I witness my life’s collapse.

Shadow that hell unto me.

Cursed is this world and cursed is all that is in this world. Cursed is this age of relentless humiliation and slapstick. Here’s your damn epiphany.

The women surround me once more, lead me by my hands and elbows out into the light. One of them, probably Marie-Thérèse, the shortest, gently pulls on my arm, forcing me to bend a bit, and wipes my face with a tissue—a tissue moist with sanitizer gel. She must have one of those miniature antibacterial bottles on her person at all times. My hands, of their own accord, escape the women’s clutches and dive into the coat’s pockets. The only thing in my pockets is a bent pair of reading glasses.

My eyes, with a will of their own, stare ahead, concentrate on the small pan I put under the radiator when I let the air out. A rusty water drop hangs on the pipe above it, waiting patiently to join its sisters who have stained the aluminum.

The kitchen is noisy, the city drawing in its morning breaths, horns and traffic and rain on the street, and Joumana talking softly, talking to me.

“What’s in the boxes?” She repeats the question a few times in response to my silence. “We should get them out of there and see what we can salvage.”

How can I explain my esoteric vocation, my furtive life?

This is the private source of meaning in my life.

“Translations,” I say. “I’m a translator.” I hesitate. What I said doesn’t ring true in my ears. I sound like a liar. “I was,” I add. My heart feels too exhausted to beat. “I was a translator.”

Joumana looks confused, her eyebrows arch into question marks. Her eyes concentrate on the lower half of my face as if she intends to lip-read. If I’d said I had bags of heroin in the cartons, she’d have been less shocked. She is a decent woman who isn’t used to deciphering the mutterings of monsters.

“Let’s get to work,” she says in a commanding tone. “Let’s get them out of those rooms.”

As soon as I try to move, I teeter like a giraffe that’s gorged herself on fermented fruit. Marie-Thérèse of the kind face wraps her arm around my waist and steadies me. My forearm rests on her shoulder. I feel both helpless and shiftless. I wish to escape all this and return home, except I am home.

“Sit,” Marie-Thérèse says, leading me to my armchair. “Catch your breath for a minute. We’ll clear the boxes out.” She hesitates for a moment, as if she intends to ask a most portentous question. “Do you have a stepladder, or should I get mine?”

I’m upset at myself, not just for blubbering in front of strangers like a little girl during kindergarten recess, but for blubbering at all. I try to control myself. In my comforting armchair, I observe the three women hustle. I try to stand up; my thigh muscles quiver, my legs give way, and I sit back down. Only for a minute, I tell myself, less than, I lie to myself. I feel like a slimy toad pressing into the mud, unblinkingly eyeing my nothingness. Spinoza has little if anything for me this morning.

Fadia had gone up to her apartment and returned with two large bedsheets and at least eight towels. Now all three sally back and forth, carrying out soppy crates one by one. They seem synchronized, as if they’ve been clearing out flood-damaged translations all their lives, as if they grew up in one of the villages on the banks of the Euphrates where this kind of work is not unusual. One of them enters the dark, another exits carrying a box from the underworld. I notice for the first time that Joumana’s feet are as flat as a duck’s. The smell of rot wafts through the apartment, the scent of decay permeates my home. Sadness and frustration well up inside me. I should stand, but I can’t yet. As they work, I can do nothing but twiddle my thumbs.

I must get stronger, fortify myself. O Flaubert, show me how to seal my chamber, send me your mason. Fear, sorrow, keep out these marauders and pillagers, this anger, this guilt, this hopelessness.

I feel nostalgic for my once arid heart that knew how to cope with such loss.

Non fui, fui, non sum, non curo.

In silence, I help my neighbors move the crates out of Egypt. I am able to reach the high ones more easily. Ahead of me Fadia steps on the Israeli landmine, a hand’s width south of the drain. I avoid the spot, still think my slipper will be soiled if it hovers anywhere near where the stain had been. The damp cardboard feels like boiled cabbage in my hands. We line the crates up on the towels and bedsheets, in the kitchen, in the living room, in the reading room, caskets of war dead being returned home. I should stand at attention and salute—so many national anthems, so many countries in the pile. I wish to fire twenty-one guns.