In Other Rooms, Other Wonders (19 page)

Rafia touched his arm. ‘Darling, you’re too old to be menopausal. Americans aren’t more free than anyone else. Just because an American runs away, to Kansas or Wyo ming, doesn’t mean that he succeeds in escaping whatever it is he left behind. Like all of us, he carries it with him.’ She turned to Helen. ‘Let me ask you. Do you think you’re free?’

‘I’m not old enough yet to know. I think that at twenty-one many girls think they are.’

‘Brilliant!’ said Sohail. He poured more wine for himself and for his parents; Helen put her hand over the mouth of her glass.

After a moment Mr. Harouni stood up and began gathering their dishes. He prevented Sohail from rising to help him, saying, ‘No, no, you sit, let me do this.’

‘You have to admit, my dad’s pretty evolved,’ said Sohail. ‘He even likes to cook.’

Her mind cooling, prickly from the wine, Helen listened to Sohail and his mother talking about their plans for the next few days, museums and the ballet on Christmas Eve. Rafia had a slight British accent, but softer than that, more rounded – as if the accent had been bred by the personality, as one of her individual characteristics.
So this is how Sohail grew up
, Helen thought. She wondered what lay beneath the angularities of Rafia’s character – a woman so imposing not only in her speech but in her manner, the way in which she moved her hands, the angle at which she held her head. In any case, Helen would manage with Rafia, they would make their peace.

As soon as they finished dessert, Sohail got up to leave, refusing coffee.

‘You don’t have to go yet,’said Rafia, her voice tentative. ‘It’s only nine-thirty.’

Mr. Harouni looked out of the window and then insisted upon loaning Helen a scarf. ‘It’s very cold, you know. And it looks good, the red suits your dress.’ He showed her how to tie the knot in a new way.

Outside it really had become very cold, and even though it was early the streets were empty, the restaurants along the quay deserted.

‘That was nice,’ said Helen, intending it as a question.

‘I wish, I wish they hadn’t come. It’s too much.’

‘Your mother loves you a lot, you know. She wanted us to stay, it was almost pathetic. She’s afraid I’ll take you away.’

‘God, and my father with his scarf. When I was little I went into the drawing room every evening to say good night to my parents – they always had guests – after my bath, with my hair wet; and my father would send the servant for a towel and rub my head with it. That’s it, that was his parenting. And he did it so badly, roughly, just because he didn’t know how to touch me.’

She took his arm, squeezed it, and leaned in to him; they walked quickly along the river, across to the Iªle de la Cité, Notre Dame looming overhead.

‘Did they like me? Did I do all right?’

‘You did beautifully, my love. I was proud of you.’

She knew that he wasn’t being perfectly sincere. ‘I feel like Sohail’s country-cute girlfriend.’

‘It’s not at all like that.’

The apartment felt warm at first, and they threw off their coats and lay back on the futon. Then it became too hot. Helen lit the candles on a little table near their heads, and in the orange light they both softened.

They made love, gently. When they finished Sohail opened the window and a delicious cold air blew in, billowing the lacy curtains and flickering the candles. A light rain fell. He stood by the window, naked, looking out at the city, and she watched him and knew that she loved him very much.

The next morning Helen and Sohail walked along the cold Seine. Among the cobblestones of the quay little puddles had frozen, rough at the edges and black at the centers; as the sun hit them, the ice softened and broke underfoot. The hard blue sky stood enormously tall over Paris. Helen wore high-heeled boots and a long wool skirt. Her friends at Yale each had loaned her something, the reefer jacket she wore that day, some little bits of jewelry, and other simple things. Sohail wore what Helen called his interesting shoes – he had a dozen pairs – jeans, and a long camel-hair coat.

They stood in front of a wooden houseboat painted cream, black at the waterline, the interior visible through latticed windows cut into the sides.

‘Let’s buy one of these soon and live on it,’ he said.

‘I know,’ she said playfully. ‘And we’ll raise sheeps and rabbits and live off the fatta the land.’ Helen often used this line from Steinbeck. She put her little mittened hand into his, turned to face him, and kissed him on the tip of his nose. ‘You make too many impossible plans.’

They left the quay at the Pont de la Concorde and turned down the Champs-Elysées. Under the trees the fallen leaves smelled bitter from the previous day’s rain. They passed a young man selling chestnuts, warming them over coals in a tray cut from a tin barrel, standing on a piece of cardboard for insulation and stamping his feet. Sohail pulled Helen close and whispered in her ear, ‘He’s one of mine, from Pakistan, from Punjab.’

The young man, stamping his feet and shivering in his inadequate coat, held up a packet of the chestnuts.

‘I’ll try some,’ said Helen. She took a euro from her purse and paid.

They emerged from the little park onto the sidewalk and could see down the Champs-Elysées to the Arc de Triomphe, humped unnaturally large over the avenue.

‘There’s a line from Merrill,’ said Sohail, ‘it’s on the tip of my tongue, something about a “honey-slow descent of the Champs-Elysées.”‘ Sohail had an excellent memory, which had compensated for his indifferent work ethic in law school. After a moment, he began reciting.

Back into my imagination

The city glides, like cities seen from the air,

Mere smoke and sparkle to the passenger

Having in mind another destination

Which now is not that honey-slow descent

Of the Champs-Elysées, her hand in his,

But the dull need to make some kind of house

Out of the life lived, out of the love spent.

He finished and sat down on a bench. The sun had come out brightly.

‘That’s beautiful, sweetie. Say it again.’

While he recited she looked at him, his handsome dark profile, and ran her hands through the thick black hair at the nape of his neck.

‘What does it mean?’ she whispered.

The next night was Christmas Eve, and Rafia had gotten tickets for the ballet,
Sleeping Beauty
at the Garnier. Helen changed first her dress and then her shoes, so that when they arrived at the Opéra they found the Harounis waiting in the lobby, Rafia wearing a midnight blue sari of shot silk, a long heavily worked pashmina shawl, and earrings made from cabochon emeralds, green drops large as grapes. Mr. Harouni looked at his watch pointedly.

‘It’s fine, darling,’ said Rafia, in response to Helen’s apologies. ‘We’ve been people-watching. The clothes are wonderful.’

Helen had settled on a pale apricot dress and ornaments that Rafia had given her as an early Christmas present, dangling white earrings. Her agitation was reflected in her girlish brimming face.

Rafia smiled, showing her dimples. ‘You make me wish I were twenty again.’

They moved up the stairs among the crowd, Helen very conscious of her long dress, afraid she would trip on the hem, particularly in the reflected attention drawn by Rafia.

The Harounis had the center box in the second loge. ‘You ladies sit in front,’ insisted Mr. Harouni, standing in the vestibule at the back of the box and placing his Burberry overcoat carefully on a hanger.

Helen protested and then gave in, arranging herself into one of the small, uncomfortable chairs upholstered in the same muted red velvet as the walls. The musicians in the pit were warming up, the sharp sounds of the string instruments cutting through the murmuring of the crowd.

The ballet began – Nureyev’s choreography, the production finespun and brilliant. At first Helen had trouble following the story, which was darker and more adult than the version of
Sleeping Beauty
she had known; but gradually she became absorbed in the precision of the dancers’ movements. When the intermission came she blinked and for a moment didn’t know where she was.

The crowed stopped clapping, and the silence in the box became prolonged.

‘Well, it’s absolutely first-rate,’ said Rafia, with a finality that did not invite further opinion. She rose and positioned her shawl, flipping it around her neck in an economical little movement. Looking at Helen, touching her elbow to guide her out, she said, ‘I was watching you – I could see it all reflected in your face, the freshness of your impressions. I’m so glad you like it.’

They walked out onto the balcony, and Sohail drew Helen over to the banister, where they could see the crowd emerging from the orchestra.

‘I love you,’ he said, kissing her on the neck.

‘I love you too,’ she replied. Everything in this world seemed to her finer, more defined, more weighted. The lights blazed above them in immense chandeliers, and the people walking up the Garnier’s famous stair seemed themselves to be gravely dancing, moving in unison, chatting fluently and with choreographed gestures.

Standing behind her, Sohail whispered in her ear, ‘Let’s have a glass of champagne.’

The Harounis wanted coffee – ‘Your father’s falling asleep,’ said Rafia – and so the two couples separated.

Helen stood by a tall golden window overlooking the Place de l’Opéra, gazing back into the elaborately decorated room, watching Sohail approach with two flutes of champagne. She felt shy, her senses alive.

As the ushers came through to call the audience back into the hall, Sohail asked, ‘Can you find it? I have to go to the bathroom, I’ll be right there.’

Helen climbed the stairs to the curving wall set with the doors to the boxes. The first door she opened was wrong, and a strange couple stared at her, as if she were trying to slip into their seats. Confused, she peeked gingerly through the next door, which was half open. Stepping into the vestibule, she saw Rafia and Mr. Harouni seated together in the front seats, looking down at the orchestra, intimate in a way that she had not seen them before. She immediately sensed they were speaking about her.

‘I suppose that depends on who is being fascinated,’ said Mr. Harouni.

‘Not really,’ answered Rafia; and then: ‘Look at that couple, aren’t they superb. Look at the way she carries herself.’

Just then Sohail burst through the door behind Helen, his face splashed with water. ‘Hello, hello,’ he said, carrying Helen forward into the front of the box.

She felt naked and ashamed as Sohail’s father rose quickly from her seat. ‘Please, Mr. Harouni,’ she implored. ‘Please sit in front.’

He wouldn’t hear of it, and so she sat exposed by the bright lights until the curtain rose, studying a program, her face burning.

When the ballet ended Helen couldn’t look at Rafia and pretended to be fumbling with her little beaded purse. Her chest felt tight, and it all seemed false to her, the people shuffling down the staircase and out through the lobby, each one to a particular evening, the wood moldings painted gold, the massive and elaborate chandeliers. As they emerged into the cold Paris night she thought,
It’s Christmas Eve
.

Sohail and Helen decided to rent a car and spend New Year’s Eve out in the country. Upon their return to Paris the Harounis would be gone. Both felt constrained – in college they sometimes fought, as couples do, but each night they came back to each other. Helen would say, ‘Let’s not go to sleep angry,’ and they would stay up and talk and sometimes make love to drive away whatever had hurt them. But in the days following the ballet they had begun to guard their thoughts. They agreed it would be better in the country, in another place, staying in a little hotel room with a creaky bed and eating a country dinner in a rain-washed town overrun by cats – that was the way Sohail described it.

Sohail had seen his parents apart from Helen, respecting her desire to have a little space, as she put it. On Christmas Day they had dropped in at the Quai des Grands Augustins apartment to exchange presents, and saw the Harounis for coffee several days later at Rafia’s favorite café, La Palette.

As they were parting, Rafia said to Helen, ‘I’ll see Sohail in ten days. But let’s you and I meet for a girls’ tea, just to have a little time alone.’ She suggested the next afternoon at the HÂtel George V. Sohail and Helen would pick up their car the following day, early in the morning, and drive to the Loire Valley to celebrate New Year’s in Montrésor, which would be empty of tourists this time of year. They would walk along the little stream Sohail described and have champagne beside the pond at midnight.

Helen had brought to Paris the suit she bought for medical school interviews, a conservative blue jacket and knee-length skirt, and she wore this to tea, with cream-colored stockings and a fitted white T-shirt to make it less formal. She looked armored, cool, and efficient, exactly as she wanted to feel. After walking up Avenue George V, past decorous stores, under a warm sun, Helen was not intimidated by the liveried doorman who quickly assessed her and welcomed her in English. Although she had timed her arrival five minutes early, looking across the large airy room, she saw Rafia sitting at a corner table, reading a magazine.