Mme Proust and the Kosher Kitchen (48 page)

I have never, however, seen Max’s lips on any other man. I remember them best of all, for they seem slightly deformed, a quiet blemish on his beauty that you would notice only if you observed him for a very long time. They are full lips, but not even—the upper lip, towards the left-hand side, is somehow slightly inflamed, dropping down in a little bump towards the lower lip so that, when closed, the line between the two is irregular. Indeed, the first time I ever noticed this I wondered momentarily if someone had punched Max several weeks before and a larger bruise was just now fading to an almost imperceptible swelling. Or if he had inadvertently bit himself, stumbling when running perhaps as a child does, mouth dangerously open, teeth suddenly clamping down and catching flesh. But almost instantaneously I also realized that this was not a temporary disfiguration but rather the permanent outline of his mouth, as though he always carried with him a small wound visible only to those who looked long and hard.

Why do we love those that we do? How do we choose the objects of our desire? I saw something in those lips that I thought could heal me, something in those eyes that would make me whole. And, detecting need and hurt in a sigh or a silence, I longed to return the favour, to nurture and mend. I lusted for his otherness, to share his language, to fix his history. At the restaurant and café tables, by my side on the park benches, in the seat next to me at the movie theatres, I thought I had glimpsed the weight that would perfectly balance mine, the other half of my soul. What did he see looking back at him? Stability, normality, heterosexuality? What was it that he wanted? Belonging, affection, a mother’s love, or just me?

I don’t suppose I will ever know, but I did actually seem him again, no chimera, but the real thing. It was last fall, after a gap of four years. It was 1998 and I was thirty-three, soon to turn thirty-four. In French we call that
l’age du Christ
, the age Christ had reached when he was crucified. A watershed year, if you will excuse a bit of ironic understatement in the translation.

It is at a medical conference in Montreal where I am working. There are interpreters who specialize in medicine, but I usually avoid it, a little peculiarity of mine. I do everything else. The demand is mainly for politics and economics; occasionally there’s stuff on agriculture or the environment. Recently, I have been pursuing a strong line in intergovernmental relations. I translate deficit for
déficit;
negotiate for
négocier;
separation for
séparation;
nation for
nation
. But this time, a colleague has fallen ill, and I get a last-minute call. The night before the conference I read through recently published papers, write up vocabulary lists, and run a mental check list; antibodies is
anticorps
, obviously.
Dépistage
is… quick, one of those self-sufficient little Anglo-Saxon gerunds… screening, mucus membranes,
les muqueuses;
needle exchange,
aiguillage
. There’s a pun there:
aiguille
is needle and
aiguillage
the term for switching on a railway track. A drug cocktail can be called a
cocktail des médicaments; toxicomanie
is drug addiction.
Récepteurs
, receptors.
Inhibiteurs
, inhibitors.

I enter the translator’s booth as the conference participants are settling in their chairs, and agree with my two colleagues inside that I’ll begin, covering the first half-hour
before handing over the job to the next in line and taking a break. A half-hour on, an hour off is our standard professional relay for a full day’s work. Then I take a look at the day’s agenda, which I had forgotten to pull out the previous night. The opening address is to be delivered by Dr. M. B. Segal. Deep inside me a fluttering lightness seems to animate my organs. I feel sick. Far below me, at the front of the room, a man with very short hair wearing a dark suit is shuffling his papers in preparation. He speaks and I remember it is him.

“Ladies and gentlemen…”

“Mesdames et messieurs…”

“Colleagues…”

“Collègues…”

“I am not here to speak about good hygiene.”

“Je ne vous parlerai pas d’hygiène.”

“I am not here to speak of condoms and precautions.”

“Je ne vous parlerai pas des préservatives et des précautions.”

“I am not here to speak of pie in the sky.”

“Je ne vous parle pas des fantasies.”

“I am here to speak about the realistic hope for a vaccine in 2000…”

  “
VIRUS
”

“virus”

“antibodies”

“anticorps”

“cure”

“remède”

time

temps

desire

le désir

love

l’amour

loss

la perte

shock, heartbreak, anger…

And then? Acceptance? Forgiveness? Or merely forgetfulness?

No one notices the conference interpreter. No one says, “Good job;” “Like the way you cleaned up his ending for him;” “Glad to hear someone still knows how to use a plus-perfect subjunctive.” Unless she “ums” and “ers” to the point of distraction, gets her expert terminology all twisted up, or expires in mid-sentence, the translator is invisible. At the end of Max’s speech, while the delegates break for coffee, I take off my headphones and prepare to slip unobserved from the auditorium. I’ve worked half an hour and then spent the last twenty minutes of his speech listening inside the booth, trying to calm myself and take a proper professional interest in the proceedings. I still have forty minutes to clear my head before I return to work. Later, on my next hour off, I’ll take a long lunch break alone, try to find a quiet corner where I can eat my sandwich, maybe finish reading the last chapter of the Hayman biography before returning to the afternoon sessions. The exit doors are placed towards the front of the hall, and as I pass near the podium, the speaker disengages himself from a little cluster of people and a voice calls to me.

“Marie, Marie.” This is Max. He is grinning widely, with an expression of delighted surprise.

“What are you doing here?”

“Working.”

“You’re translating?”

“Yes. I just did your speech.”

“That’s great. So, what did you think?”

“I’m just the translator. It was fine.”

“How are you? It’s been a long time…”

“Yeah. A long time. I’m good.”

“So, uh, how’s work?”

“It’s good. Busy, there’s lots of it. I don’t usually do medical stuff but one of my colleagues got sick.”

“How are your parents?”

“They’re good. My dad’s retired now. He sold the business. It took my mother some time to adjust but he loves it.”

“Are they still here?”

“Yeah, they still live in Montreal.”

This kind of exchange continues for several minutes as we catch up on four years of family and career.

Then he says, “So, what are you doing for lunch?”

I feel anger rising inside me and fight back tears.

He has not changed physically—except for his hair. He now wears it cropped close to the head, a spray of curls across his forehead the only reminder of the shoulder-length locks he has cut off. Sitting at a table in the conference centre cafeteria, I want to reach out and push those last curls back with my hand to see where the hairline now falls. It is not a malicious desire, a jealous urge to see if he too has aged. On the contrary, I seek reassurance that he remains the same. It is the same hand with which I almost daily, delicately touch the skin under my chin, absent-mindedly, riding on a bus, sitting
in the booth, checking that the flesh is still taut, frightened that it seems infinitesimally softer than it did a week or a month before. Lines have yet to appear on his face; my first showed up in my twenties, cracks around my eyes where I have smiled too much or squinted in the light. Now, in my thirties, two furrows are slowly tracing a path between my nose and the corners of my mouth. I will age like my mother, my face collapsing quickly into sagging and folded flesh.

A young man hails Max from across the room and beckons him over. He excuses himself and walks away from me, his narrow form moving carefully amongst the tightly spaced tables and chairs, his head, small now that it has so little hair, held erect with a quiet confidence, his face animated by an expression that is lively but slightly aloof. I watch him and wonder how I could have ever mistaken him for other than who he is.

He greets his friend, consults with him a while, and then brings him back to the table. I do not need to hear the proprietary tone with which Max introduces him to know. They look remarkably alike; small men, olive-skinned, dark-haired, brown-eyed, straight-nosed, thin-limbed, beautiful boys. Theirs is belonging.

He doesn’t stay long, sensing perhaps my resentment, and when he goes, I ask Max the conventional questions: where they met, what he does for a living.

“He’s very beautiful,” I say, hoping to hide any hint of jealousy or reservation.

“Yes. I always think he looks Italian, like someone Caravaggio would have painted. I told him that once, that he looked like a Caravaggio. Know what he said?”

“What?”

“What’s a Caravaggio?”

We laugh together, catching each other’s glance, delighting for one forgetful moment in our sameness.

“Have your parents met him?” I ask.

“No, I take that slowly. My mother”—he hesitates—“Well, you know my mother…”

We say goodbye after lunch, agree to stay in touch, and as I watch him go I find myself thinking, again, of his mother, of her anxiety that he establish himself in medicine, in middle-class life. What does she feel now, I wonder, she who has come so far for safety, about her gay son, the AIDS doctor. In my mind, I find images floating and words forming, a story composing itself.

A
BISCUIT?
S
OME OF
your own rugelach?”

Sarah held out the plate of cookies towards Clara, who helped herself to a rugelach and perched it on the saucer of her teacup.

“A good woman. So good to you, Sarah.” Sarah nodded and sipped her own tea.

“Yes, she was always generous to Sarah,” Daniel agreed and smiled at his own mother, who had been firmly installed in their living room for the past three hours.

The purpose was to air one’s grief, give it room to breathe so that it would lead a natural life and fade quietly and properly in its own time rather than reappear angry and unwanted at inappropriate moments long after it should have past. Sarah knew the rationale and the protocol, but sitting shivah for Rachel was wearing her down. She felt guilty, she supposed, that she had not ever succeeded in being the daughter that Rachel had wanted, and now it was irrevocably too late.

Sarah had always done her duty towards Rachel, had let her serve as Maxime’s grandmother, taken him regularly to see her, invited her for the holidays, finally eaten dinner every week at the Villa Nova. For years, she had visited and chatted, but without the depth of affection that would have
given these actions joy. It was Daniel who brought joy into the house on Gladstone Avenue, and later to the old age home, always flirting, cajoling, complimenting. “Your cheesecake, Rachel, like no other…” “That dress, such a becoming colour…” “Rachel, your health…” Sarah had repressed her annoyance at these attentions, just as now she bit back her anger as Daniel supplied the words of agreement with Clara’s platitude. She felt that he shamed her and she secretly suspected that was his intent, and also, in the way of long-married couples, that he knew she thought that. Nonetheless, he had continued, covering for her, supplying what she could not, so that if Rachel never had children, she had at least a son-in-law who could say the Kaddish.

She had made it to 2000, but whether or not she could claim to have seen the new millennium was another matter. Her first stroke, a few weeks before the new year, had left her partly paralyzed and increasingly senile. The second followed with merciful swiftness and they had held the funeral service on a cold, sunny day in late February. Several days later they were almost finished their shivah, and a whole parade of old ladies as well as many of their own friends and all their relations had already visited their living room, bearing with them a wide array of cookies, sandwiches, and casseroles that each evening left Sarah annoyedly laying a table with all these mismatched contributions while Daniel and his brothers said prayers in the other room. Mrs. Field, a long-ago neighbour from Gladstone Avenue, perhaps ten years Rachel’s junior, had quietly come to pay her respects and sweetly stayed, delicately offering memories where there was need for conversation, remaining silent when there was none. Sarah, remembering that Mrs. Field had first appeared on the street at some point during the war, realized to her
surprise that she must have known this woman longer than any other living soul, and kissed her warmly when she took her leave. Doddering old Mr. Seeger from Villa Nova appeared, with a young Filipino woman for his nursemaid, and laughed and cried in a way that left Daniel amusedly speculating on his relationship with Rachel. Lisa came, all the way from Calgary where she and Michael now lived, but they had reason to be in town for his business anyway. Sarah saw her irregularly since her move, and they spent the time catching up with each other’s lives as much as they did mourning Rachel. Lisa asked after Maxime, and Sarah did not know what to say.