In Other Rooms, Other Wonders (20 page)

‘I’m sorry,’ began Helen, hurrying across the carpet.

‘No, no, I came early, I like to settle in.’ She stood up and kissed Helen on the cheek. ‘How
are
you?’

Rafia wore Western clothes – tailored brown slacks, brown high-heeled boots, and a white cashmere sweater with a thick turtleneck – which surprised Helen, this collected, hip look.

‘Have some petits fours, Helen,’Rafia said, as the waiter approached the table. ‘They’re delicious.’ She sat back and lit a cigarette, looking at Helen with a hint of a smile, a friendly, appraising expression. ‘So, you’re going to the Loire,’ she began.

‘Though it’s strange to be leaving Paris – when I spent so much time wanting to be here.’

‘Sohail’s like that – he always wants to do the extra bit, the flourish. You’ll be back in Paris another year. I’m glad for you.’

Rafia was gentler than she had been at their previous meetings – even the clothing was less assertive.

‘Somehow it’s difficult for me to think of myself as someone who will do all these things, travel and live in other countries.’

‘One of the things that I like about you, Helen, if you don’t mind my saying so, is that you
don’t
assume those things. But I know you will have a life in the big world. You’re the right kind of American, the Americans who went to the moon. And the Americans of Hawthorne and Robert Lowell – the Puritans and the prairie.’

‘Hawthorne and Lowell are more Puritan than prairie.’

‘True. I suppose you are also.’

The waiter brought the tea and a silver dish with a selection of delicate petits fours. Rafia took one, holding it distinctly with her long fingers.

‘Would you like to talk about Sohail?’ asked Helen.

‘Yes. Though that’s not the only reason I asked you here. I also wanted to have a real moment with you. Quite aside from Sohail, I respect you, and I envy your freedoms. In your life you’ll have solid things, and you’ll have them more solidly than I did.’

‘And we both wonder where Sohail fits in.’

‘You tell me.’ Rafia said this softly. ‘Is he one of those solid things?’ She placed her elbows on the table, joined her hands together, and touched her lips with her fingers, the gesture masculine, her eyes bright. Watching her, struggling to keep up with her, Helen marveled at how quickly Rafia could transform herself.

She had known that the question of her future with Sohail would be at the center of this meeting, but now it seemed that any words she spoke would be too final, irrevocable.

‘Sohail and I haven’t
really
talked about it. Of course we’ve walked around the subject, a million times. He’s so good at ignoring things that bother him. I can’t help being the responsible one. I brood.’

‘And where does this brooding lead?’

‘It depends on the day. I try to live in the present, not to ask so many questions.’

‘I owe it to you to be frank, even more because I like you and I respect you. Sohail is gentle – not weak, soft. That’s one of the reasons we both love him, and it’s also his greatest flaw. My husband never missed a meeting or a day of work in his life; and I’ve spent or misspent my life helping my husband’s career and more or less having a career myself, as someone who knows where the power lies and how to focus it. Sohail doesn’t have that mettle in him. He gets by on intelligence, that’s why he’s still successful.’

‘Perhaps he won’t need to be hard.’

‘Because of his money? He’ll need it more because of that. Even I can remember when everyone knew everyone in Karachi. Pakistan isn’t like that anymore, there are many powerful men who would look at Sohail and his property and see a lamb fattened for the slaughter. And then, it’s as difficult to have a meaningful life with a lot of money as without. But my point is, he’ll follow you and do what you decide. I can’t do anything about it – if I could I probably would, because I don’t think you can make him happy, and I know he can’t make you happy. You would hate Pakistan. You’re not built for it, you’re too straight and you don’t put enough value on decorative, superficial things – and that’s the only way to get by there.’

‘He could live in America.’

‘And how would that be? He would be emasculated, not American and not with any place in Pakistan, working at a job he wouldn’t like. I see these boys come through Karachi on two-week vacations – the boys who settled in America – and they always have this odd tamed look, a bit sheepish. It’s so much worse after 9/11 – they more or less apologize daily. Sohail’s background will always be a factor, when he flies out for a deposition to the Cracker Belt or the Corn Belt. He’s proud of who he is, but they would knock a bit of that out of him. In any case, for you he would do it, join a law firm in New York. He would even stay with you, if that’s what you wanted. But I promise you, he wouldn’t be happy, he wouldn’t feed the best part of himself.’

Helen looked at Rafia squarely. ‘And in Pakistan will he feed that best part?’

‘I don’t know,’ cried Rafia, startling Helen. ‘I don’t know.’

‘And would you be willing to let him go?’

Rafia leaned back in her chair and lit another cigarette, her hair, which was drawn back in a bun, cutting across her temples in two gleaming black bands. ‘Yes. But that’s a different concern. I’ve said my piece, and now I trust you to do what you will. I trust you, it’s as simple as that.’

‘That’s almost blackmail, Mrs. Harouni. Suppose I don’t agree with you.’

‘Then you’ll do what you will.’

Now Helen leaned back in her chair and looked out onto a little courtyard. In summer the hotel would serve tea there. ‘I also had something to say, Mrs. Harouni.’

Rafia laughed, the sound easy and pleasant. ‘After all that, I think you should call me Rafia.’

‘Thank you. Rafia, then. I guess I just wanted to thank you for making Sohail what he is. He’s been everything to me, he’s been good to me. I think a lot of the things that he showed me, you showed him first. Just his way of looking at things, I mean, the good part of it. And books and pictures.’ She stopped. She could go no further in being gracious. It was dawning on her that Rafia had driven her to say more than she wanted, and perhaps more than she meant.

Rafia narrowed her eyes. ‘I can’t decide if those are or aren’t the words of a future daughter-in-law. There’s something valedictory about them.’

‘Maybe of a daughter-in-law from the prairie. We
are
ingenuous, you know.’

This broke the tension. Helen knew the interview was over. They began speaking inconsequentially, of an exhibition they had seen, separately, at the Petit Palais.

When they had finished their tea, they walked out together, down streets drowsy in the warm, still afternoon.

‘I’m going to walk,’ Helen said.

‘And I will take the Métro.’

At the entrance Rafia embraced Helen closely and then leaned back, holding her forearms. ‘Thank you.’

And before Helen could respond, Rafia turned and skipped down the stairs, in her impeccable high-heeled boots, went through the turnstile, and disappeared into the station.

Af Fontainbleau Sohail exited the motorway in the direction of Orléans, among the little towns with narrow streets. Helen observed the mossy orange-tiled roofs, the weathered stucco walls, the drives leading to the large summer homes of Parisians. Now in December, the day before New Year’s Eve, the towns were shuttered. Helen played with the radio, alternating between classical music and French pop, and they spoke only of the passing countryside.

She felt comfortable with him, the car warm, the windshield wipers throwing off the rain that began and then stopped. As they reached the city center of Orléans the sun emerged among strips of cloud. The blueness of the sky struck Helen as she uncurled herself from the car. Immacu late puddles reflected the brightening light.

They walked on the washed pavement, among crowds going to a fair in the main square, with an ice-skating rink and booths selling crafts. Weaving in and out of the people, holding hands, they broke apart and then came back together again, hardly aware of doing it, under the faµades of nineteenth-century municipal buildings that crowded shoulder to shoulder around the square. Inhaling the rough scent of pine boughs, they passed between lanes of temporary plywood shops hammered together. Heavy orange electrical cords lay tangled underfoot, feeding the many lights.

They shared a crÁpe, chocolate with bananas, and then bought a Nina Simone disc. The people around them were in a holiday mood, many of them old, the country aging.

Helen stopped at a booth selling candy, sour balls and gummi bears, jelly worms striped green and yellow, choc olate almonds, peanut brittle, each type in a little glass cookie jar, each to be weighed separately.

‘Can we get some?’ Helen would sometimes eat a whole bag of candy, then become sad and childish, with a headache.

Sohail pulled at her leather-gloved hand. ‘Let’s get it at the grocery store, we need water anyway. It costs four times more here.’

‘But I want this.’

‘Why? It’s the same thing.’

She walked away, angry for a moment, and then her cheeks burned at the thought that she was spending his money. She had hardly any of her own for this trip, no savings; at school she lived on nothing, always had a job, even after she met Sohail.

They passed through a little alley to reach the car, and when they were in the shadows he turned to her and buried his face in her hair. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’

She comforted him, his face wet.

‘I can’t believe I didn’t buy you that fucking candy. I know I’ll remember it, that I didn’t.’

He wanted to walk on, but she wouldn’t let him, and held him. ‘You always give me nice things. You’ve taken such good care of me.’

In the grocery store he laughed brokenly, sun after rain. ‘They really don’t have the same candy.’

They sat for a moment in the car. She leaned over awkwardly from her seat and kissed his neck. She kissed him on the lips, her tongue in his mouth, his face tasting of salt.

‘I’m okay,’ he said, pulling himself together. ‘It’s okay.’ He unfurled the map.

She picked randomly. ‘Let’s spend the night here. I like the sound of it, Beaugency. It’s on the river.’

She took out the guide and read aloud to him about the town as they drove through the streets and then along the Loire, the sky becoming dusky, the clouds first orange and then red.

At the Auberge Maille d’Or in Beaugency, an old posting inn hovering between tight-lipped poverty and seediness, with the plaster cracked and paint chipping on the iron bed frame, their room looked onto a courtyard paved with cobblestones, with a fountain at the far end and, in the gloom along the wall, green plastic crates filled with empty beer bottles. They were the only guests and had what would pass for the best room, at the end of a long gallery on the second floor, with big windows. ‘I love run-down hotels,’ Sohail said. He turned on the TV and found a channel showing cartoons, dubbed in French. Helen moved about the big bare room putting away her things, her toiletries in the bathroom, hanging up her clothes.

At dinner they ordered a second bottle of wine. Helen became giggly and afterward asked him to drive her along the river, which glittered and then ran dark under the arches of an old stone bridge. Back at the hotel, a fat black kitten with white paws stuck its nose around the door of the reception desk.

‘Look, it’s our country cat,’ she said, tipsy, looking down at it. She knew she was looking pretty, she had been flirting with Sohail all evening, and now she wanted to hold the little kitty, it would suit her. The kitten looked up with wide green eyes, intent, face uplifted like a little black bowl, its feet splayed. It turned and raced out the door, skidding on the tiled floor, chubby tail standing upright.

‘Viens, viens,’
she called, rolling the unfamiliar French word on her tongue, playing at being a little girl.

The kitten slipped behind the beer crates and would not emerge. The long courtyard shaded away into darkness, its silence broken by the splashing sound of the unseen fountain.

Helen sat on her haunches, calling. The kitten came out toward her a few feet, but when she moved forward it scrambled away again, its little white paws flashing.

She sat back and looked up at the stars, at the moon framed by the pollarded branches of a lime tree, stark without leaves. The same stars lit the snowfield behind her house in Connecticut. She would never again be twenty-one in an old hotel in the Loire Valley in France. ‘I can’t believe Paris is over,’ she said, very softly, because she knew that Sohail was nearby, watching her. Fluidly she stood up, made a kissing sound toward the kitten, and walked back to him.

In their room she led him onto the bed and pulled his clothes off, threw off her own, raising her legs in the air to push off her panties, biting him, his nipples. The loose bedsprings made long rusty sounds, like a knife leisurely sharpened on a whetstone.

Afterward, she stood in the window with a blue-printed cotton scarf wrapped around her body like a sarong, looking out over the courtyard. The kitten ambled on the path beneath their room, on its fat clumsy legs. She called to it, ‘Hello, kitty cat.’