I Think of You: Stories (12 page)

“Aren’t you going to have any lunch or what?”

Farah got to her feet. Monsieur Vasilakis was standing next to her.

“Well? Aren’t you going to offer your friend something to eat?” The voice was querulous.

Farah glanced at Milou and answered quickly: “’Am Sayim is bringing me some lunch in a minute. Won’t you join us, monsieur?”

“He’s no use anymore, the old idiot. He’s gone senile.” Vasilakis was glancing around him as he muttered. Farah brought over a chair from the nearest table. “There you are, Monsieur Vasilakis. Please sit with us.”

Now she was between the old man and his daughter.

“Where is the food for your guest?”

Farah glanced at Milou’s set face and unease built up inside her, an old familiar unease. For years she had heard her grandfather use this tone to the daughter who had elected to stay and look after him. For years she had watched Tante Soraya’s face set in just such a closed look as this one.

The waiter appeared with a tray. “That’s the spirit, Khawaga!” He beamed. “You join the ladies and give the telly a rest. There’s nothing on it but empty talk anyway,
and
it’s all repeated.” He set the dishes down in front of Farah. “I’ll go get the khawaga’s wine. Have a glass of wine, Sitt Milou, with the khawaga,” he urged.

Milou shook her head. The carafe and a half-full glass were placed on the table. “Eat in good health and happiness.” Sayim smiled at Farah. “You bring good company to us and light up our restaurant.”

“And what about you?” Milou stroked Athène and continued as though there had been no interruption. “What about you, ma petite? Are you better off on your own too?”

“Oh, Tante Milou,” sighed Farah, poking at the stuffed zucchini. “It’s so difficult being a divorced woman here. I didn’t think it would be this difficult.”

“It’s just because you haven’t got your own flat,” Milou lifted a hand from Athène and reached over to pat Farah. “When you have your own flat it will all be different.”

“But I’m never going to have my own flat.” Farah put down her fork.

“You’ve already bought a flat.”

“Yes, but the man hasn’t even started building it yet. It’s all on paper. If he starts
tomorrow
it won’t take him less than five years, and I’m practically thirty already. I really never thought it would be so difficult.”

“Everything is difficult now. Everything,” said Monsieur Vasilakis. He put down his glass and leaned forward, a hand on either knee. “Everything’s changed. Life has become difficult. Very difficult.” He shook his head. “In old times, it took fourteen different types of fish to make a bouillabaisse. I used to pick each fish personally. Nowadays what can you find? Three, four types maybe. Impossible to make a
vraie
bouillabaisse. Your father, he understood these things, he would tell me from the night before: Khawaga Theo, tomorrow we eat bouillabaisse.”

“Papa, do you know who this is?”

“Eh? Of course I know who this is. Ismail Morsi’s daughter.”

“Ismail Morsi’s daughter’s daughter, Papa.” Milou’s voice was flat.

“I know, I know.” The old man was impatient. “You’ve always been friends together, you two. Even though she married and you didn’t.” He turned to Farah. “Your daughter must be une belle demoiselle by now, eh?”

“Farah has a boy, Papa. His name is Adam. He’s almost nine?” Turning to Farah.

“Almost. And he’s utterly gorgeous. I would have brought him with me, but he’s spending the day with his cousins. He’s my whole life now, Tante Milou. I don’t know what I’d have done if he wasn’t with me. I can’t imagine how some people go through life without ever … Oh, Tante Milou, I’m sorry—”

“It’s all right, chérie.” Milou patted Athène and scratched the dog’s neck. “Don’t worry. That’s all in the past now. But what about il y a quelqu’un? Un homme?”

“Man, what man?” Monsieur Vasilakis had turned to see what was happening on television, but now he turned back, suspicious. “Aren’t you married, child? My daughter herself went to your wedding.”

Farah touched Milou’s arm gently. “I am divorced, monsieur. My husband and I have left each other.”

“Divorced, divorced, that is all one hears nowadays. Nobody has patience anymore.” Monsieur Vasilakis sorrowed. “It wasn’t so in our day. You waited. Maybe one partner makes a mistake. The other one waits. If one pulls a bit, the other lets go a bit. That way the world can go on. Life wants patience. Eh … so you’re divorced? A waste of the money your father
spent on your wedding. He had a big wedding for you, I know. Milou was there. A man who knew how to do things, your father: a proper man.”

When her father had been silent for a few moments, sucking on the ends of his mustache and shaking his head sadly, Milou repeated quietly, “So, my dear. What about a man?”

Monsieur Vasilakis came to again. “Stay away from men.” He looked earnestly at Farah. “Sons of bitches, all of them. They look impressive and inside they’re worm-eaten. Leave them alone. Especially now. There
used
to be men. Why, the king himself used to dine here. And Eden. He ate at that table over there—with Montgomery. Anthony Eden, you know?” He nodded. Then he turned slowly in his chair to the television.

“I’m not interested, Tante Milou. No, truly. The few— two men, in fact—that I sort of
could
like are already married, firmly married. Other than that, I’ve had one proposal and you should have heard it: ‘As for the fact of you being a di-vorcée, I am prepared to overlook it,’ and he was supposed to be progressive. No. And besides, I don’t want any conflicts around Adam. There was—” Farah paused. “I did think of an arrangement.”

“An arrangement?”

“A marriage of convenience, I suppose it’s called. I’m fed up with all the emotional stuff and I know I’m not going to be in love again; I don’t want to be. But I do need a setup, I need somewhere to live.”

“What are you talking about? This is a theory? Or there is a real person somewhere you are thinking of?”

“Oh, I’m not really thinking about it anymore. Yes, there is someone. But it’s really too ridiculous.”

“Is it someone from the club? An old friend from school? What is ridiculous?”

“Oh no, no, nothing like that. It’s a neighbor … of Tante Soraya’s. You might even know him.”

Milou stared at Farah.

“Do you know him, Tante Milou? Monsieur Philippe? Panayotis? Tante Milou?”

“No. No, not really.”

“Well, they’ve been Tante Soraya’s neighbors forever. He’s really quite old, I suppose. I don’t know exactly
how
old. He doesn’t look too bad, though, and he has a very gentle manner. Adam likes him. But I must say the main thing that made me think was the flat. They are magnificent, those flats, Tante Milou, aren’t they? The high ceilings, the cornices, the long corridors. And
his
flat even has some amazing prewar wallpaper that looks as though it was put up yesterday. And then of course there’s all that marvelous old furniture that his mother had when she was a bride absolutely light-years ago. Imagine. But I know it’s wrong to think like that, and anyway there’s something kind of spooky about it all. How come you’ve never met him, Tante Milou?”

“I have … met him. At occasions: weddings and so. That’s all.”

“Well, there is only him and Nina—that’s his mother. He has sisters, but they’ve been settled in Greece forever and his father has been dead a long time. But Monsieur Philippe still
lives with Nina. It’s quite strange really, when you think of it, because Tante Soraya says that he’s always had the same job since he graduated: some small accountancy job. She won’t really talk about him, though—just says, ‘Philippe never changes,’ and that’s the end of it. But she did tell me that he wouldn’t take over his father’s business when old Monsieur Yanni died.”

“Yanni, eh? Old Yanni the grocer?” Monsieur Vasilakis only half turned around. “He was a good man too, God have mercy on him, like your father. We didn’t see much of him here, but Milou used to buy all our groceries from him. Every week. He had a shop at the very end of the Mouski. Every week she would go there and come back with the groceries in a calèche. He gave her good discounts—for old customers, you know, Greeks together. His daughters went back to Athens, but he had a son too. A beautiful boy, they said,
and
he went to university. But we don’t know anything about him.”

“Didn’t you like the fatta, then, Sitt Farah?” Sayim was disappointed at the pile of bread and rice left on the plate.

“It was delicious, ’Am Sayim, but I could never finish it. I’m afraid I picked out all the meat, though.”

“This won’t do, Sitt Farah. This won’t do—”

“And I’ve eaten up all my vegetables.” Farah smiled up at the old waiter, who was removing the plates.

Milou looked at Farah. “When you say you considered marrying … this man, he has asked you?”

“Oh, I’m not going to marry him, Tante Milou! I was just, you know, playing with the idea.”

“But has he asked you?” Athène stood up and tried to get off her mistress’s knee, but Milou held her by the collar.

“Oh, no.”

“Well then?”

“But he would if I wanted him to.”

“But he is Christian, Orthodox?”

“He would become Muslim.”

“But how do you know? How do you know he would?”

“Tante Milou, one knows these things. There’s definitely something in his eyes when he looks at me, and when I meet him on the stairs or he comes home from work and finds me chatting to Nina, he always looks as though something terrific has happened. I don’t talk to Tante Soraya about this kind of thing, but Nadia, my youngest aunt, noticed and said she thought Monsieur Philippe had a tendresse for me.”

“Nadia? Now she’s really your father’s darling, isn’t she?” Monsieur Vasilakis was animated. “He would bring her in here when she was only so high and sit her properly at the table and let her order whatever she wanted! Ah! What a world! The last of the bunch is always pure sugar, as they say. How would I know? I only had Milou.” Monsieur Vasilakis drooped again. He put out a shaky hand for his glass. “She was everything to me. Everything.”

Milou held on to Athène’s collar. “Tell me,” she said, straightening up, “tell me. Suppose you thought a man had a tendresse for you, but he wasn’t doing anything about it. And you wanted to hurry him up a little, so you made a move, an unmistakable move, one that nobody could pretend had been
a misunderstanding. And he … he ignored it … ignored you. What would you feel?”

“It can’t happen,” answered Farah firmly.

“But if it did?”

“It can’t happen. But if it did, then I suppose I shouldn’t care for him after that. But it is a lovely word, isn’t it, Tante Milou?”

“What? What is?”

“Tendresse.”

“Ah,” said Milou. “Tendresse … of course.”

Melody

T
he scent of jasmine fills the air. It has been filling the air for the last month, I guess. Which is how you know the season is changing in this country. In this country the bou-gainvillea blooms against our walls all year round. The lizards dart out from under the stones and back in again. The mosquitoes buzz outside the netting and the pool boy can be seen tending the pool every morning from eight to ten. We’re not allowed to use the pool—we women, I mean. It’s only for the kids, and the men, of course. They can use anything. And they do. Use anything, I mean. And I don’t get to smell the jasmine that much, either. You can only really smell it at night, and I don’t go out that much at night because of Wayne. Not that
there’s anywhere to go, you understand. Only shopping or visiting in the compound. But even that I don’t get much of. Wayne goes to sleep at eight. If he doesn’t get his twelve hours he’s a real grouch all the next day. And he has to wake up at half past seven in the morning to catch the school bus. Now, that’s one thing I could never understand: why was the child never sent to school? She just kept her with her all the time. When we first came to this compound six months ago, they were the first people I saw. The first residents, that is. You don’t count the maintenance people and the garden boys. We moved in on a Friday afternoon and the first thing we did was get right out again and drive up and down the road. I remember we said how convenient it was to have a grocery store, a newsstand, a flower shop, and a hospital right on our doorstep practically. Not that any of them looked like they were up to much, but still, they’d have to be better than nothing. And on Saturday morning, as Wayne and I came back from the grocery store (Rich—that’s my husband—had gone to work, of course), we saw a woman and a child standing by the pool. The woman smiled and Wayne ran over. I followed. Mind you, I thought from the start she looked a bit tacky. Her hair was bronze, obviously dyed, and you could see the dark roots where it was growing out. She had quite a bit of eye makeup and her skirt was shorter than you normally see around here. She hadn’t even bothered with an abaya, which is normally okay on a compound but not with such a short skirt. The kid was very pretty, though, and little Waynie fell for her straightaway. She was a true blonde with natural fabulous curls. Her face was
heart-shaped with a pert little nose and big blue eyes, and she had drawn one of her mother’s veils over her like a miniature abaya. It turned out she was only a couple of months older than Wayne. But she was much more self-conscious, self-possessed. Being a girl, I guess. Girls grow up quicker than boys. Well, Ingie, that was her name—the woman’s, I mean— chatted away, although you couldn’t really call it chatting since her English is appalling. She told me a bit about the compound and I asked where her kid went to school because I had to decide on a school for Waynie, and she said Melody did not go to school. She said she had another baby, Murat, who was asleep upstairs just then, and she was keeping them together and teaching Melody how to read and write. She said, “I like her with me.” I thought right away that was wrong, although of course it wasn’t for me to say, but the kid couldn’t speak a word of English. She was very pretty and everything, and Wayne was standing there just staring at her all through our conversation. He was smitten. I think he just fell in love. Well, later that day when Wayne dropped his gun in the pool and I couldn’t reach it and he’s crying his head off, Ingie appears at her window and lowers a broomstick, yelling, “Try this, try this!” So we got the gun out of the water and went upstairs to give her back her broomstick and Wayne just would not leave; he had to stay and play with Melody. I never understood what the attraction was, quite frankly. She never played his kind of game. All she’d do was play with dolls and dress and undress them and talk to them—in Turkish. While he watched. And once I went to collect him and found them both sitting on the bathroom floor
with bare feet and wet clothes, washing all the dolls’ clothes. And Ingie just laughs and says, “It is so hot.” Ingie’s main thing is laughing. Laughing and clothes and makeup and dancing. And cooking. When we first moved in, she would come around maybe twice a week, each time with some “little thing” she had made: pastry, apple tart, pizza, whatever; things that take a lot of making. And little Melody was helping her. Melody also helped her, Ingie said, make all those tiny doll clothes for Barbie. I said, “But you can buy them at Toyland for practically nothing.” She laughed and shrugged and said, “But I like.” And I guess she likes cooking three-course meals and a sweet for her husband every night and waiting on him too, no doubt. The way these Muslim women treat their husbands just makes me ill. They actually
want
to be slaves. Mind you, of course, that’s probably how she got him in the first place. I thought it was a bit odd when I saw him: a great big tall man, obviously a lot older than her. And, laughing, she tells me that they (Ingie, Melody, and Murat) are his second family. I pretend to be surprised, but in point of fact Elaine had already told me (Elaine is my Scots friend—she’s been here for almost four years and she knows everything). Elaine told me he used to be married to an American woman and he’d lived in Denver for twenty years. They had two boys and he looked after them and did everything else as well. The wife worked and she had a strong personality and naturally she wouldn’t do anything in the house. I have a lot of sympathy with that. I mean, housework and me are not best friends. I’d rather read a book. I do it here, though. Housework, I mean. Since I’m not working and
Rich is. But I don’t like it. Anyway, Ingie’s husband (he wasn’t her husband yet at that point, of course), he had enough one day, so he packed up and went home and got himself a Turkish wife who would do absolutely everything for him. Then he brought her to this country where he could virtually lock her up while he made lots of money. We don’t even know if he ever divorced his first wife. Ingie did not say any of this, of course. Just said he was a genius and loved his work and could fix any machine in the world and that his first wife is a “very bad girl” and that he is a “very happy, very joyful man.” And indeed, their Betamaxes are there to prove it. Him dancing in front of family and friends at Melody’s third birthday. A video of him filming Melody and a pregnant Ingie romping in the woods on a holiday in Vermont. All very joyful. Ingie too is a “very joyful person.” When you visit her, she always has some tape on—loud. Disco, rock, oriental music, whatever. And one of Melody’s favorite games is to sit Wayne down, get her mother to put on some of that wailing, banging stuff, grab a scarf, and start dancing for him. And she can dance. Arms and legs twirling. Neck side to side. Leaning backward. The lot. And Wayne, who normally can’t sit still for a minute, sits transfixed, watching a little blonde who cannot speak a word that means anything to him, strutting and flirting about with a veil. I wasn’t even sure this friendship was particularly good for him. But the tears and the tantrums that we had if I tried to stop him from going over—it was just easier to let him go. Once she was supposed to be coming to our apartment to play with him and she did not show. He just sat and waited. He wasn’t even four
yet, but he sat and waited for her for over two hours and then he made me take him to Ingie’s apartment and when they weren’t there, he sat down on the doorstep and wept. This whole compound, as far as he was concerned, was where Melody lives. Melody didn’t care as much as he did, I think. But then she had a little brother and Waynie has no one. Well, he has three brothers, but they are much older and are back in Vancouver. In point of fact, we too are a second family. Rich was married for fifteen years. I don’t really know that much about his first wife—except he pays her a lot of alimony, which is part of the reason why we’re here. But he already had three sons and never wanted to have Wayne. Wayne was the result of a deal I made with Rich. When he got the offer of this job and he really wanted to take it, I said, “Okay, you give me what I want and you can have what you want.” I mean, not every woman would agree to be buried alive in a place like this, would she? So he signed the contract and we bought the Jeep and set off overland, and while we were crossing France I got myself pregnant. He joked a bit about making sure it was a girl, but after Wayne came he really chickened out and went and got himself vasectomized so I could not nag him for another kid. Ingie said that her husband was waiting for their third. Always talking about it. But Elaine said Ingie had told her she was on the pill. She didn’t want to get pregnant again because some fortune-teller back home told her she would have three children and one would break her heart. So she figured if she only had two, that would somehow invalidate the whole prophecy. I don’t know about all that. I mean, I don’t believe in
fortune-tellers myself, but sometimes you hear stories of things they’ve said … Well, anyway, Ingie’s husband was nagging her to have a third and every month he waited to see if she had conceived and meanwhile she’s secretly on the pill and hiding the strip among Melody’s pants and vests and terrified that he should find out. That’s what these Muslim men are like; they can never have enough children. Mostly, though, they want boys. But this one wanted another girl. I asked Ingie how come he wanted a girl and she said he thought girls were more tender and loving than boys. Besides, a boy would always end up belonging to his wife, while a girl was “her father’s daughter forever.” “But,” she added, “of course we believe everything God bring is good.” Of course.