An Accidental American: A Novel (29 page)

I put my flashlight in my mouth and squeezed my hips through the narrow trapdoor above the second-floor landing, ducking low to avoid the attic rafters. It was dark and close in the cramped space, the air thick with centuries of must, the floor littered with other people’s castoffs, most of them mysteries in themselves. A legless doll, a case of empty bottles, a leather suitcase, a box of rations from World War I. And other things, indistinguishable in their dustiness, bits of machinery and mounds of fabric, home now to the mice I shared the house with.

Pushing aside a cobweb, I reached down, opened the battered footlocker that held the remnants of my life, and ran the flashlight beam across the contents. It was a meager collection. A few stray photographs, my discharge papers from the Maison des Baumettes, some things my aunt had left me before she’d died: a brown paper satchel that held family pictures and a white shoe box with gilt letters that read DIOR, PARIS.

I lifted the lid and set it aside, then pulled the last letter from the box, put my face to the envelope, and inhaled deeply. Expecting what? Sea air and rosemary and geranium, the rock terraces of Jounieh baking in the afternoon sun. What I smelled was merely the taint of time, mildew and mothballs, the chest’s fading cedar perfume, and the faintest hint of the rose sachets my aunt put in her closets each fall. Someone— my grandmother, I assume— must have hand-carried the letter to France, for there was no postmark, just my aunt’s address and a hastily affixed stamp.

Carefully, I pulled the paper from its sheath, unfolded its two yellow creases, and held it up to the light.

Jounieh

April 20, 1983

Dear Emilie,

I have been thinking about that night all those years ago when we went swimming off the beach here and got caught in the undertow. Do you remember how I panicked and you had to keep me from drowning? I thought we were going to die, so I confessed to all sorts of things. How I’d let Marc Nazal kiss me by the tennis courts at the Summerland, even though I knew you liked him. How it was me, and not the housekeeper, who stole the bottle of Chanel that Nana Sophie sent you from France for your sixteenth birthday. I’ve never been good at keeping secrets from you.

There was so much I wanted to tell you on the phone the other night but couldn’t. I promise to tell you everything when we get to France. Maybe you’ve known all along what was happening. Like you knew about me and Marc Nazal but never said anything. You always were smarter than I am.

I’m sorry I’ve lied to you. I know it’s a poor excuse, but I’ve meant well. Sabri and I have both meant well.

I guess I should say it’s for the best that we are leaving Lebanon, but I can’t. It would be a lie on my part. Leaving is the only choice for me now. I have convinced Papa to get Sabri onto one of his ships, and Sabri has agreed to go.

It’s hard to believe the Americans will protect us if they are willing to destroy themselves. And it seems as if this is what happened, that the bombing was allowed to happen. This makes no sense, of course, but then there isn’t much about this war that does.

I called the French embassy yesterday to tell them what I knew. Hardly a heroic gesture, but it was the best I could do. There is no getting through to the Americans at this point, and the sad truth is that I trust the French more than I trust the Lebanese.

Honestly, I think they thought I was insane. I didn’t even have a name to give them, but the man I talked to promised to get my information into the right hands, whatever those might be.

I have never been so scared in my life. I am afraid of dying in pain or alone. I am afraid of dying for someone else’s cause, for something I don’t believe in. I am afraid of the obscurity of death here. That horrible woman on the Voice of Lebanon each night with her tallies of the dead. Not even names anymore. I am afraid of not dying, of being taken by the Syrians or the Hezbollah instead, whoever this man was working for. I have seen what they do to people.

I want you to promise to take care of Nicole if I die. She may find out everything one day, but I don’t want you to tell her. Maybe someday I will be able to tell them both the truth, but now, more than ever, I know I made the right decision. The powerful have the advantage in this world. I can only hope Nicole will understand and forgive me. I hope someday Sabri will forgive me, too.

It’s hard to believe that in a matter of hours we’ll be gone. Maman has driven Nicole to her school to see her friends, and Papa’s men have taken the furniture and boxes and gone. It is strange to think that this place and the war will go on without us.

I wish you were here. We could walk down to the promenade one last time, or take the car up into the mountains. Maybe I will go myself. There is plenty of time, and it would be better than sitting in this empty house. I will say goodbye for you, too.

All my love,

Mina

Of course, my mother had not gone down to the promenade or driven up into the mountains. Somewhere between the moment when she’d licked the envelope closed and when we’d caught her in the driveway, she’d made other plans. She had gone to see Kanj; of this I had never had any doubt. But what had made her go in spite of her fear was a mystery with which I would have to reconcile myself, since there was no one left to answer that question.

For an instant I could see her again, her smile blooming up at me. And later, what I could only imagine: that long drive down the coast, her windows open to the sea, the water stretching dark to the horizon. Twenty kilometers to Beirut, twenty kilometers in which she could have pulled the car over, could have turned around and headed back. Twenty kilometers in which to unmake her decision, and yet she hadn’t.

I tried to concentrate on the puzzle at hand, Valsamis and Kanj and my mother, what she had said about the Americans and the Syrians. But there were other, darker questions clamoring for my attention.

Forgive her for what? I wondered as I set the letter aside and picked up the next one from the box.

Beirut

April 14, 1983

Emilie,

There was a massive evacuation in West Beirut today. French soldiers found an unexploded Israeli bomb buried next to an apartment building in Hamra. It took me forever to make the crossing.

Sabri was very upset. There has been talk of attacking the Americans for some time now. And then, just yesterday, he heard that Hezbollah has prepared two martyrs for a car bombing of the embassy next Monday.

I’m sure this is all just panic on our part. This city is so full of rumors. But Sabri feels the Americans should be told all the same. It would be a disaster for the country if they were to leave now. Though I’m starting to believe disaster is what some people want.

I will see our American friend tomorrow if I can. Though I’m sure they already know. According to Sabri, they have their own contact within the new movement.

Do you remember old Mrs. Wazzan from the first floor? I forgot to tell you in my last letter that she died. Her nephew found her in her apartment with the cats last week. It’s been so long since anyone we knew died of natural causes that everyone is stunned.

I promised Papa that I will go up to Jounieh this weekend. Sometimes I think they are the crazy ones, living there as if nothing has happened. But I am grateful every day for Nicole’s safety.

I will write to you next week.

Mina

Our American friend.
The shadowed eye of my flashlight stuttered back over the three words. It was such a strange thing to have written, as if somehow she and Sabri had shared this person. And then, later,
Sabri feels the Americans should be told all the same.

What else had Kanj told them? It was a strange alliance, Amal and the Americans. Though in Beirut at that time, all sorts of unlikely friendships had flourished.

A car bomb.
I heard Valsamis again, what he’d said to me that first night suddenly clear. He had known, I thought. My mother had gone to him with Sabri’s warnings, and he had done nothing to stop the embassy attack. This was why she had been so afraid in her final letter. And her fear had been well-founded. Valsamis could not have allowed her to live with that kind of information.

I remembered that first afternoon, how I’d known even then that Valsamis was a con.
According to Sabri,
my mother had written,
they have their own contact within the new movement.
My mother hadn’t seen it, and neither had Kanj, but Valsamis had been playing them all.

With the exception of that night five years earlier at the Piccadilly, when he had first noticed her and Kanj together, Valsamis had never seen Mina LeClerc outside the little bookstore on the rue Achrafiye where they met faithfully every second Monday of the month. So when she came to him that last time, Valsamis almost didn’t recognize her.

It was a Saturday night. Most of Mid-East was in town already for the meeting on Monday, and everyone was gathering at the Commodore for dinner and drinks, but Valsamis was headed home. He had realized early that his place in the Agency would always be separate from the others, and he knew better than to pretend that wasn’t the case.

Mina was standing in the doorway of the building across the street from the embassy; he saw her as soon as he turned onto the street. Her hair was pinned neatly in a head scarf, and she was dressed in the modest, smocklike attire that was the uniform of so many of the city’s young Shia women. An attempt at disguise, Valsamis had thought, though a poor one, for here in the northern part of the city, the costume made her stand out more.

Valsamis didn’t approach her. He made sure she’d seen him, then kept walking, listening for her footsteps on the sidewalk behind him. Though they had talked about this kind of thing before, this was not one of the scenarios they had agreed upon, and Valsamis wasn’t sure how to proceed or what she wanted from him. Eventually he ducked into a café on the rue Clémenceau.

Their previous meetings had all been on her territory, and Valsamis could tell she was nervous as soon as she stepped inside. Her eyes ranged across the café as she made her way toward him. She sat down at the next table, ordered a coffee, and drank it quickly and without looking at him. When she was finished, she stood as if to leave, then glanced hastily back at Valsamis.

Without saying anything, she reached into her smock, pulled out a folded piece of paper, and set it on the table next to Valsamis’s coffee cup. Her hand was shaking, and her face was pale beneath the scarf. She had taken a huge risk coming here, and she knew it. Valsamis knew it as well.

“Sabri wanted you to have this,” she said. Then she turned and made her way out of the café and back onto the dark street.

Valsamis stopped at the edge of the garden and let his shoes sink into the snow. He was panting from the walk, and his own ragged breath was all he could hear, his old lungs working against the cold. His father’s lungs, he thought, and he was back in the Pintlers again, tailing the old man up into some godforsaken draw. Even handicapped by forty years of Lucky Strikes, Valsamis’s father had always been able to outwalk him.

There was no car in Nicole’s driveway, but the downstairs lights were on, the windows of the kitchen and living room shining out onto the snow. At the back of the garden, where the hump of the stone wall rose up like a surfacing whale, two neat sets of footprints, now partially obscured, emerged from the woods and crossed the yard toward the house.