In Other Rooms, Other Wonders (18 page)

‘Hello, darling,’ she said. ‘Come have tea with me.’ She was sitting on a divan in a green silk sari with her feet tucked under her, her black hair pulled tightly back. ‘I don’t see you enough.’

He had been avoiding her, unable to abide her questions about his future – he was still ‘settling in,’ going every couple of days to the headquarters of the family business to write emails and read the
New York Times
online. During this time, with his confidence faltering, he found her overwhelming. He fixed on the cucumber sandwiches, devouring one after another.

‘Why won’t you ever use a plate? Your manners are even worse since you went to America.’ She took a plate, put a napkin under it, and gave it to him. ‘Sohail, I’d like to ask a favor.’ She blended these articulations together – following the maternal scolding, her request almost flirtatious.

He raised one eyebrow, nibbling at another sandwich.

‘I want your father to take a vacation, he’s pushing himself too hard. He’s always bored in London. I thought we might come to Paris.’ She said this brightly. ‘Only for a week, I know you’ll want to be alone. Do you remember when we were in Rome, how nice it was? Your father mentioned it just the other day, how much he’d liked that.’

‘I haven’t seen Helen since June,’ responded Sohail carefully. ‘Wouldn’t it be sort of like taking your mother on your honeymoon?’

‘Oh, we wouldn’t be in your way. And I’d like to see her. You’ll hardly know we’re there. I’ve found an apartment.’

He acquiesced, because he generally ended up doing as she wanted, and because he would inevitably and soon have to introduce Helen to his mother, in order to move the relationship forward.

Sohail had borrowed an apartment on Iªle Saint-Louis from one of his childhood friends, also a Pakistani industrialist’s son, who had spent much of the last several years in Paris being a writer – though not actually writing. Arriving in Paris two days before Helen, Sohail cleaned the apartment, made the bed with new sheets he bought at Galeries Lafayette, and picked up food and wine from the tiny overpriced shops on the Rue Saint-Louis-en-l’Iªle. After collecting Helen from the airport, Sohail carried her bag on his head up to the sixth-floor garret, hitting it on the turns of the narrow stairwell. She had come to love this in him, his playing, his willingness to be slightly ridiculous. At the top he dropped the suitcase, panting, and with a flourish produced a strange circular key, unlike those in America.

She paused at the door, a pretty girl, unmistakably American, her short hair held back with a tortoiseshell barrette. She had lived among and through books, in high school and then college, won a scholarship at Yale. Paris had been a dream from her childhood, when her single mother could not take her places, not to Europe. Walking across the room and opening the window, she looked out over a cloister, then across the Seine to the Panthéon and the city beyond. A phrase came to her mind –
my barefoot need
– another phrase from a book. She did not want Sohail to see this. It had begun raining again and the slate roofs opposite shed streams of water.

At dusk the following day, Sohail sat watching Helen dress for their first dinner with his parents. He wore a sports jacket, a black cashmere turtleneck, and pleated trousers; she rolled black stockings over her legs, which were pink and damp from the shower. Walking to the closet, naked but for the stockings, she removed a black dress, stepped into it, pulling it over the flare of her hips. She turned her back to him, and he zipped it, then stood for a moment holding her close, inhaling the scent of her hair.

They walked past the halfhearted Christmas tree in front of Notre Dame and then along the left bank of the Seine, among the headlights of scooters and cars, the crowds rushing home into the twilight, the tourists everywhere taking pictures, the Parisians with buttoned-down faces. The wet streets glittered. Helen walked beside Sohail, keeping up with him, her heels clicking. She drank in the city around them, moving so quickly, so differently.

A barge passed, going upstream, long and fast, smoking into the night, the lit cabin cozy and cheerful above the cold black water.

‘You know,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘the Seine doesn’t divide Paris, it keeps the city together. It’s just the right width, not a little stream but a public place in the heart of the city.’

Sohail leaned down and kissed her. ‘That’s a great image, the river
not
dividing Paris.’

‘It’s yours,’ said Helen. ‘For your next poem.’

His parents were staying in an apartment on the Quai des Grands Augustins, overlooking the Seine. Sohail and Helen went up to the second floor, found the door, and he had just touched the bell when a voice called, ‘Coming.’

‘Hello, darling,’ said his mother, presenting her cheek to kiss, looking past him to Helen. She had a husky, attractive voice and was dressed quite plainly, a long white cotton tunic embroidered in white over slim-fitting pants.

Helen extended her hand, palm flat, and looked Sohail’s mother in the eye, directly and ingenuously. ‘Hello, Mrs. Harouni. I’m Helen.’

‘And I’m Rafia. Welcome.’ She had fixed a stiff smile on her face.

Sohail’s father stood to one side, a smallish man with a little mustache, precisely dressed in a thick brown tweed suit with a vest and muted tie and brilliantly shined shoes of a distinctive tan color. As he took Helen’s coat he said, ‘Welcome, welcome. Thank you for coming.’ But his statement appeared to be reflexive, without connection to his mental processes. Putting the coat on a hanger, he looked at her closely, with shrewd eyes. Sohail had thrown his coat on a chair near the door.

‘Very nice,’ said Sohail, looking around at the apartment, which had high ceilings and diminutive fittings. A woman on the stereo sang in French, and his mother had lit candles.

‘It belongs to Brigadier Hazari,’ said his father, sitting down again in front of the fire.

Rafia and Helen had moved into the living room. The mother leaned down and looked at Helen’s necklace, an Afghan tribal piece, silver with lapis.

‘Isn’t that pretty.’

‘Sohail gave it to me. It’s one of my favorite things.’

Rafia said to Sohail, turning and smiling at him, ‘Will you get Helen and yourself whatever you want – it’s in the kitchen.’ Then to Helen, ‘Come sit here by me.’

Sohail brought a drink for Helen and one for himself. His father sat back in the sofa, his drink on his knee, and looked sedately about the room. Rafia began.

‘I promised Sohail not to embarrass him, not to say how much I’ve heard about you.’ She had little dimples when she smiled. ‘But it’s true, he keeps telling me about you, it’s sweet.’

‘Ma, please. That makes me sound like I’m fifteen,’ said Sohail.

‘It’s the simple truth. And why shouldn’t I say it, it’s nice to see you happy. But please come help me with dinner. Bring your drink.’

As mother and son went into the kitchen, Helen heard Rafia whisper to Sohail, ‘But she’s
so
pretty.’

Helen was left with Mr. Harouni, who did not seem disposed to conversation. He looked complacently at the fire, his glass sweating. After hesitating to have a drink, Helen had accepted a white wine, reminding herself that she was an adult. Now she took a sip of the wine, trying to relax. She had been sitting up erect, halfway forward in the seat.

Still looking into the fire, Mr. Harouni observed speculatively, ‘Sohail was very happy at Yale.’ She waited for more, but the father seemed to be content placing this statement on the table between them, a sufficient offering.

‘He really was, Mr. Harouni. He’s been happy as long as I’ve known him.’ She wanted to be as straight with his parents as possible.

‘Please, call me Amjad.’ The thick tweed of his suit and the smallness of his hands and feet made him appear to Helen like an expensive toy. He spoke very quietly.

She decided to press on, to maintain even this slight momentum of conversation. ‘His life in Pakistan is so different, at least from what I know. But he has an American side, what I think of as American. He’s very gentle – I don’t mean Americans are gentle, they’re not. But it’s easier to be gentle in a place where there’s order.’

She paused, took a sip of her wine, waited for a moment.

‘Go on,’ said Mr. Harouni.

‘He and my mother got along well, even though – she’s a secretary in a little Connecticut town, and she has a house with cats and a garden. He liked that. At first I thought he was pretending, but he wasn’t.’

‘It’s a wonderful country. There’s nothing you people can’t do when you put your minds to it. I admire the Americans tremendously.’ He sipped from his glass, the ice cubes clattering. ‘So many of our young people want to live in America – I suppose Sohail as well.’

‘He talks about it,’she said cautiously. ‘But he talks about Pakistan a lot too. When he and I first met he told me stories about Pakistan for hours.’

‘And what about you? What would you like to do?’

‘I want to be a doctor. I just sent out my applications to medical school.’ She blushed as she said this, the color unevenly creeping up her fine-grained cheekbones.

‘On the East Coast?’

‘In New York, maybe. When I was little my mother would drive me to the city, to the Museum of Natural History or the Met, or sometimes we would just walk around looking at the stores and the people. I’ve always wanted to live there.’ She paused again, conscious that she might sound pathetic. ‘It feels like the center of everything. And it’s not the way it used to be, it’s safe and clean, you can walk through the park at midnight.’

The father looked at her with an expressionless face. ‘Perhaps Sohail can set up a branch of our company there.’

Sohail had come in and heard this last part of the conversation. He sat down on the arm of Helen’s chair, put his hand on her shoulder, and said, ‘Now you’ve seen it, Helen. That’s as close as my father comes to humor.’ He leaned forward, took his father’s empty glass, and stood up. ‘I warn you, this man has more factories than your mother has cats. Watch out for him. Stick to name, rank, and serial number.’

Mr. Harouni smiled appreciatively.

‘We both want the same thing – what’s best for you,’ said Helen in a flirtatious tone quite new to her. ‘Why would I need to be careful?’

They had dinner at a small table under a spiky modern chandelier painted with gold leaf, Mr. Harouni sitting at the head and filling their bowls with bouillabaisse, saffroned and aromatic. Rafia tasted hers from the tip of her spoon and said, ‘It’s good. It’s from Quintessence – that’s the new chic place, supposedly.’ Sohail poured the wine and then turned down the lights, so that the table was illuminated by candles.

A
bateau mouche
glided by on the Seine, its row of spotlights trained on the historic buildings along the quay, throwing patterned light through the blinds onto the living room wall. For a moment they carefully sipped the hot stew.

Helen felt she should break the silence. Just as she was about to begin, Rafia turned to her.

‘Do you know, Sohail was almost born in Paris?’ She sipped from her spoon, looking at Helen sideways. ‘I was in London to have the baby, and I was enormous and felt like an elephant – so I begged Amjad to come over with me and let me pick out some outrageous outfits. I thought I’d have my girlish figure back the day after I delivered.’

Sohail beamed across at Helen, his face framed by two wavering candles. ‘You can tell this is one of my mother’s tall tales – by the simple fact that she’s never begged my father for anything. If she had said she ordered my father to Paris it might have been true.’

‘In any case, you were almost born here, in the HÂtel d’Angleterre.’

‘I wish it had happened,’said Sohail. ‘For a Pakistani being born in London is about as exciting as being born in Lahore. Paris would be glamorous.’

Rafia tilted her head toward Helen. ‘Where would you have liked to be born?’

‘I’ve never thought of that. The first time I met Sohail he asked me where I’d like to be buried.’

‘In seven years of dating, that line has never once failed.’ Sohail appeared to be saying the first thing that came into his head, filling up the gaps in the conversation.

‘Don’t be flip, Sohail. Amjad, where would you like to have been born?’

The father, who had been drinking his stew with the equanimity of a solitary patron in a busy café, looked up from under his brows.

‘I suppose in the happiest possible home. And not in India, I think. And not in Europe. Perhaps in America.’

This interested Helen, relieving her irritation at the conversation between mother and son, which seemed too practiced, as if they were performing together, and in their display excluding her.

‘Why America?’ she asked. Her oval face reflected the light of the candles.

Placing his forearms on the table, still holding his spoon, Mr. Harouni looked for a moment over his wife’s head at the opposite wall. ‘You know or you correctly assume that I was born into a comfortably well-off family. All my life I’ve been lucky, my business succeeded, I’ve had no tragedies, my wife and I are happy, we have a wonderful son. The one thing I’ve missed, I sometimes feel, is the sensation of being absolutely free, to do exactly what I like, to go where I like, to act as I like. I suspect that only an American ever feels that. You aren’t weighed down by your families, and you aren’t weighed down by history. If I ran away to the South Pole some Pakistani businessman would one day crawl into my igloo and ask if I was the cousin of K. K. Harouni.’