Lie Down With Lions (8 page)

There had been no pain for a while, but in the last few minutes, as she watched Rabia move quietly around the room, Jane had been feeling new sensations in her abdomen: a distinct feeling of pressure accompanied by a growing urge to
push.
The urge became irresistible, and as she pushed, she groaned, not because she was in pain, but just with the sheer effort of pushing.

She heard Rabia’s voice, as if from a distance, saying: “It begins. This is good.”

After a while the urge went away. Zahara brought a cup of green tea. Jane sat upright and sipped gratefully. It was warm and very sweet. Zahara is the same age as me, Jane thought, and she’s had four children already, not counting miscarriages and stillborn babies. But she was one of those women who seemed to be full of vitality, like a healthy young lioness. She would probably have several more children. She had greeted Jane with open curiosity, when most of the women had been suspicious and hostile, in the early days; and Jane had discovered that Zahara was impatient with the sillier customs and traditions of the Valley and eager to learn what she could of foreign ideas on health, child care and nutrition. Consequently Zahara had become not just Jane’s friend but the spearhead of her health education program.

Today, however, Jane was learning about Afghan methods. She watched Rabia spread a plastic sheet on the floor (What had they used in the days before there was all this waste plastic around?) and cover it with a layer of sandy earth, which Zahara brought from outside in a bucket. Rabia had laid out a few things on a cloth on the floor, and Jane was pleased to see clean cotton rags and a new razor blade still in its wrapping.

The need to push came again, and Jane closed her eyes to concentrate. It did not
hurt
exactly; it was more like being incredibly, impossibly constipated. She found it helpful to groan as she strained, and she wanted to explain to Rabia that this was not a groan of agony, but she was too busy pushing to talk.

In the next pause, Rabia knelt down and untied the drawstring of Jane’s trousers, then eased them off. “Do you want to make water before I wash you?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She helped Jane get up and walk behind the screen, then held her shoulders while she sat on the pot.

Zahara brought a bowl of warm water and took the pot away. Rabia washed Jane’s tummy, thighs and private parts, assuming for the first time a rather brisk air as she did so. Then Jane lay down again. Rabia washed her own hands and dried them. She showed Jane a small jar of blue powder—copper sulfate, Jane guessed—and said: “This color frightens the evil spirits.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Put a little on your brow.”

“All right,” said Jane; then she added: “Thank you.”

Rabia smeared a little of the powder on Jane’s forehead. I don’t mind magic when it’s harmless, Jane thought, but what will she do if there is a real medical problem? And just exactly how many weeks premature is this baby?

She was still worrying when the next contraction began, so she was not concentrating on riding the wave of pressure and in consequence it was very painful. I mustn’t worry, she thought; I must make myself relax.

Afterward she felt exhausted and rather sleepy. She closed her eyes. She felt Rabia unbutton her shirt—the one she had borrowed from Jean-Pierre that afternoon, a hundred years ago. Rabia began to massage Jane’s tummy with some kind of lubricant, probably clarified butter. She dug her fingers in. Jane opened her eyes and said: “Don’t try to move the baby.”

Rabia nodded, but continued to probe, one hand on the top of Jane’s bulge and the other at the bottom. “The head is down,” she said finally. “All is well. But the baby will come very soon. You should get up now.”

Zahara and Rabia helped Jane stand and take two steps forward onto the earth-covered plastic sheet. Rabia got behind her and said: “Stand on my feet.”

Jane did as she was told, although she was not sure of the logic of this. Rabia eased her into a squat, crouching behind her. So this was the local birthing position. “Sit on me,” said Rabia. “I can hold you.” Jane let her weight settle on the old woman’s thighs. The position was surprisingly comfortable and reassuring.

Jane felt her muscles begin to tighten again. She gritted her teeth and bore down, groaning. Zahara squatted in front of her. For a while there was nothing in Jane’s mind but the pressure. At last it eased, and she slumped, exhausted and half asleep, letting Rabia take her weight.

When it started again there was a new pain, a sharp burning sensation in her crotch. Zahara suddenly said: “It comes.”

“Don’t push now,” said Rabia. “Let the baby swim out.”

The pressure eased. Rabia and Zahara changed places, and now Rabia squatted between Jane’s legs, watching intently. The pressure began again. Jane gritted her teeth. Rabia said: “Don’t push. Be calm.” Jane tried to relax. Rabia looked at her and reached up to touch her face, saying: “Don’t bite down. Make your mouth loose.” Jane let her jaw sag, and found that it helped her to relax.

The burning sensation came again, worse than ever, and Jane knew the baby was almost born: she could feel its head pushing through, stretching her opening impossibly wide. She cried out with the pain—and suddenly it eased, and for a moment she could feel nothing. She looked down. Rabia reached between her thighs, calling out the names of the prophets. Through a haze of tears Jane saw something round and dark in the midwife’s hands.

“Don’t pull,” Jane said. “Don’t pull the head.”

“No,” said Rabia.

Jane felt the pressure again. At that moment Rabia said: “A small push for the shoulder.” Jane closed her eyes and squeezed gently.

A few moments later Rabia said: “Now the other shoulder.”

Jane squeezed again, and then there was an enormous relief of tension, and she knew that the baby was born. She looked down and saw its tiny form cradled on Rabia’s arm. Its skin was wrinkled and wet, and its head was covered with damp dark hair. The umbilical cord looked weird, a thick blue rope pulsing like a vein.

“Is it all right?” Jane asked.

Rabia did not reply. She pursed her lips and blew on the baby’s squashed, immobile face.

Oh, God, it’s dead, thought Jane.

“Is it all right?” she repeated.

Rabia blew again, and the baby opened its tiny mouth and cried.

Jane said: “Oh, thank God—it’s alive.”

Rabia picked up a clean cotton rag and wiped the baby’s face.

“Is it normal?” asked Jane.

At last Rabia spoke. She looked into Jane’s eyes, smiled and said: “Yes. She is normal.”

She’s normal, Jane thought. She. I made a little girl. A girl.

Suddenly she felt utterly drained. She could not remain upright a moment longer. “I want to lie down,” she said.

Zahara helped her step back to the mattress and put cushions behind her so that she was sitting up, while Rabia held the baby, still attached to Jane by the cord. When Jane was settled, Rabia began to pat the baby dry with cotton rags.

Jane saw the cord stop pulsing, shrivel and turn white. “You can cut the cord,” she said to Rabia.

“We always wait for the afterbirth,” Rabia said.

“Do it now, please.”

Rabia looked dubious, but complied. She took a piece of white string from her table and tied it around the cord a few inches from the baby’s navel. It should have been closer, Jane thought; but it doesn’t matter.

Rabia unwrapped the new razor blade. “In the name of Allah,” she said, and cut the cord.

“Give her to me,” said Jane.

Rabia handed the baby to her, saying: “Don’t let her suckle.”

Jane knew Rabia was wrong about this. “It helps the afterbirth,” she said.

Rabia shrugged.

Jane put the baby’s face to her breast. Her nipples were enlarged and felt deliciously sensitive, like when Jean-Pierre kissed them. As her nipple touched the baby’s cheek, the child turned her head reflexively and opened her little mouth. As soon as the nipple went in, she began to suck. Jane was astonished to find that it felt sexy. For a moment she was shocked and embarrassed; then she thought: What the hell.

She sensed further movements in her abdomen. She obeyed an urge to push, and then felt the placenta come out, a slippery small birth. Rabia wrapped it carefully in a rag.

The baby stopped sucking and seemed to fall asleep.

Zahara handed Jane a cup of water. She drank it in one gulp. It tasted wonderful. She asked for more.

She was sore, exhausted and blissfully happy. She looked down at the little girl sleeping peacefully at her breast. She felt ready to sleep herself.

Rabia said: “We should wrap the little one.”

Jane lifted the baby—she was as light as a doll—and handed her to the old woman. “Chantal,” she said as Rabia took her. “Her name is Chantal.” Then she closed her eyes.

CHAPTER FIVE

E
llis Thaler took the Eastern Airlines shuttle from Washington to New York. At La Guardia Airport he got a cab to the Plaza Hotel in New York City. The cab dropped him at the Fifth Avenue entrance to the hotel. Ellis went inside. In the lobby he turned left and went to the 58th Street elevators. A man in a business suit and a woman carrying a Saks shopping bag got in with him. The man got out on the seventh floor. Ellis got out at the eighth. The woman went on up. Ellis walked along the cavernous hotel corridor, all alone, until he came to the 59th Street elevators. He went down to the ground floor and left the hotel by the 59th Street entrance.

Satisfied that no one was following him, he hailed a cab on Central Park South, went to Penn Station and took the train to Douglaston, Queens.

Some lines from Auden’s “Lullaby” were repeating in his head as he rode the train:

Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral.

It was more than a year since he had posed as an aspiring American poet in Paris, but he had not lost the taste for verse.

He continued to check for a tail, for this was one assignation his enemies must never learn about. He got off the train at Flushing and waited on the platform for the next train. No one waited with him.

Because of his elaborate precautions it was five o’clock when he reached Douglaston. From the station he walked briskly for half an hour, running over in his mind the approach he was about to make, the words he would use, the various possible reactions he might expect.

He reached a suburban street within sight of Long Island Sound and stopped outside a small, neat house with mock-Tudor gables and a stained-glass window in one wall. There was a small Japanese car in the driveway. As he walked up the path, the front door was opened by a blond girl of thirteen.

Ellis said: “Hello, Petal.”

“Hi, Daddy,” she replied.

He bent down to kiss her, feeling as always a glow of pride simultaneously with a stab of guilt.

He looked her up and down. Underneath her Michael Jackson T-shirt she was wearing a bra. He was pretty sure that was new. She’s turning into a woman, he thought. I’ll be damned.

“Would you like to come inside for a moment?” she said politely.

“Sure.”

He followed her into the house. From behind she looked even more womanly. He was reminded of his first girlfriend. He had been fifteen and she had been not much older than Petal. . . . No, wait, he thought; she was
younger,
she was
twelve.
And I used to put my hand up her sweater. Lord protect my daughter from fifteen-year-old boys.

They went into a small, neat living room. “Won’t you sit down?” said Petal.

Ellis sat down.

“Can I get you something?” she asked.

“Relax,” Ellis told her. “You don’t have to be so polite. I’m your daddy.”

She looked puzzled and uncertain, as if she had been rebuked for something she did not know to be wrong. After a moment she said: “I have to brush my hair. Then we can go. Excuse me.”

“Sure,” said Ellis. She went out. He found her courtesy painful. It was a sign that he was still a stranger. He had not yet succeeded in becoming a normal member of her family.

He had been seeing her at least once a month for the past year, ever since he came back from Paris. Sometimes they would spend a day together, but more often he would just take her out to dinner, as he was going to today. To be with her for that hour, he had to make a five-hour trip with maximum security, but of course she did not know that. His aim was a modest one: without any fuss or drama he wanted to take a small but permanent place in his daughter’s life.

It had meant changing the type of work he did. He had given up fieldwork. His superiors had been highly displeased: there were too few good undercover agents (and hundreds of bad ones). He, too, had been reluctant, feeling that he had a duty to use his talent. But he could not win his daughter’s affection if he had to disappear every year or so to some remote corner of the world, unable to tell her where he was going or why or even for how long. And he could not risk getting himself killed just when she was learning to love him.

He missed the excitement, the danger, the thrill of the chase, and the feeling that he was doing an important job that nobody else could do quite as well. But for too long his only emotional attachments had been fleeting ones, and after he lost Jane he felt the need of at least one person whose love was permanent.

While he was waiting, Gill came into the room. Ellis stood up. His ex-wife was cool and composed in a white summer dress. He kissed her proferred cheek. “How are you?” she said.

“The same as ever. You?”

“I’m
incredibly
busy.” She started to tell him, in some detail, how much she had to do, and, as always, Ellis tuned out. He was fond of her, although she bored him to death. It was odd to think he had once been married to her. But she had been the prettiest girl in the English Department, and he had been the cleverest boy, and it was 1967, when everyone was stoned and anything could happen, especially in California. They were married in white robes, at the end of their first year, and someone played the “Wedding March” on a sitar. Then Ellis flunked his exams and got thrown out of college and therefore was drafted, and instead of going to Canada or Sweden he went to the draft office, like a lamb to the slaughter, surprising the hell out of everyone except Gill, who knew by then that the marriage was not going to work and was just waiting to see how Ellis would make his escape.

He was in the hospital in Saigon with a bullet wound in his calf—the helicopter pilot’s commonest injury, because his seat is armored but the floor is not—when the divorce became final. Someone dumped the notification on his bed while he was in the john, and he found it when he got back, along with another oak-leaf cluster, his twenty-fifth (they were passing out medals kind of fast in those days).
I just got divorced,
he had said, and the soldier in the next bed had replied
No shit. Want to play a little cards?

She had not told him about the baby. He found out, a few years later, when he became a spy and tracked Gill down as an exercise, and learned that she had a child with the unmistakably late-sixties name of Petal, and a husband called Bernard who was seeing a fertility specialist. Not telling him about Petal was the only truly mean thing Gill had ever done to him, he thought, although she still maintained it had been for his own good.

He had insisted on seeing Petal from time to time, and he had stopped her calling Bernard “Daddy.” But he had not sought to become part of their family life, not until last year.

“Do you want to take my car?” Gill was saying.

“If it’s all right.”

“Sure it is.”

“Thanks.” It was embarrassing having to borrow Gill’s car, but the drive from Washington was too long, and Ellis did not want to rent cars frequently in this area, for then one day his enemies would find out, through the records of the rental agencies or the credit card companies, and then they would be on the way to finding out about Petal. The alternative would be to use a different identity every time he rented a car, but identities were expensive and the Agency would not provide them for a desk man. So he used Gill’s Honda, or hired the local taxi.

Petal came back in, with her blond hair wafting about her shoulders. Ellis stood up. Gill said: “The keys are in the car.”

Ellis said to Petal: “Jump in the car. I’ll be right there.” Petal went out. He said to Gill: “I’d like to invite her to Washington for a weekend.”

Gill was kind but firm. “If she wants to go, she certainly can, but if she doesn’t, I won’t make her.”

Ellis nodded. “That’s fair. See you later.”

He drove Petal to a Chinese restaurant in Little Neck. She liked Chinese food. She relaxed a little once she was away from the house. She thanked Ellis for sending her a poem on her birthday. “Nobody I know has ever had a poem for their birthday,” she said.

He was not sure whether that was good or bad. “Better than a birthday card with a picture of a cute kitten on the front, I hope.”

“Yeah.” She laughed. “All my friends think you’re so romantic. My English teacher asked me if you had ever had anything published.”

“I’ve never written anything good enough,” he said. “Are you still enjoying English?”

“I like it a
lot
better than math. I’m
terrible
at math.”

“What do you study? Any plays?”

“No, but we have poems sometimes.”

“Any you like?”

She thought for a moment. “I like the one about the daffodils.”

Ellis nodded. “I do, too.”

“I forgot who wrote it.”

“William Wordsworth.”

“Oh, right.”

“Any others?”

“Not really. I’m more into music. Do you like Michael Jackson?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure I’ve heard his records.”

“He’s really cute.” She giggled. “All my friends are crazy about him.”

It was the second time she had mentioned
all my friends.
Right now her peer group was the most important thing in her life. “I’d like to meet some of your friends, sometime,” he said.

“Oh,
Daddy,
” she chided him. “You wouldn’t like that—they’re just
girls
.”

Feeling mildly rebuffed, Ellis concentrated on his food for a while. He drank a glass of white wine with it: French habits had stayed with him.

When he finished he said: “Listen, I’ve been thinking. Why don’t you come to Washington and stay at my place one weekend? It’s only an hour on the plane, and we could have a good time.”

She was quite surprised. “What’s in Washington?”

“Well, we could take a tour of the White House, where the President lives. And Washington has some of the best museums in the whole world. And you’ve never even seen my apartment. I have a spare bedroom . . .” He trailed off. He could see she was not interested.

“Oh, Daddy, I don’t know,” she said. “I have so much to do on weekends—homework, and parties, and shopping, and dance lessons and everything. . . .”

Ellis hid his disappointment. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Maybe sometime when you’re not so busy you could come.”

“Yes, okay,” she said, visibly relieved.

“I could fix up the spare bedroom so you could come anytime you like.”

“Okay.”

“What color shall I paint it?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s your favorite color?”

“Pink. I guess.”

“Pink it is.” Ellis forced a smile. “Let’s go.”

In the car on the way home she asked him whether he would mind if she had her ears pierced.

“I don’t know,” he said guardedly. “How does Mommy feel about it?”

“She said it’s okay with her if it’s okay with you.” Was Gill thoughtfully including him in the decision or just passing the buck? “I don’t think I like the idea,” Ellis said. “You may be a little young to begin making holes in yourself for decoration.”

“Do you think I’m too young to have a boyfriend?”

Ellis wanted to say yes. She seemed far too young. But he couldn’t stop her growing up. “You’re old enough to date, but not to go steady,” he said. He glanced at her to catch her reaction. She looked amused. Maybe they don’t talk about going steady anymore, he thought.

When they reached the house, Bernard’s Ford was parked in the driveway. Ellis pulled the Honda in behind it and went in with Petal. Bernard was in the living room. A small man with very short hair, he was good-natured and utterly without imagination. Petal greeted him enthusiastically, hugging and kissing him. He seemed a little embarrassed. He shook Ellis’s hand firmly, saying: “Government still ticking over okay, back in Washington?”

“Same as always,” Ellis said. They thought that he worked for the State Department and that his job was to read French newspapers and magazines and prepare a daily digest for the France Desk.

“How about a beer?”

Ellis did not really want one, but he accepted just to be friendly. Bernard went into the kitchen to get it. He was credit manager for a department store in New York City. Petal seemed to like and respect him, and he was gently affectionate with her. He and Gill had no other children: that fertility specialist had done him no good.

He came back with two glasses of beer and handed one to Ellis. “Go and do your homework now,” he said to Petal. “Daddy will say good-bye before he leaves.”

She kissed him again and ran off. When she was out of earshot he said: “She isn’t normally so affectionate. She seems to overdo it when you’re around. I don’t understand it.”

Ellis understood it only too well, but he did not want to think about it yet. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “How’s business?”

“Not bad. High interest rates haven’t hit us as badly as we feared they might. It seems that people are still willing to borrow money to buy things—in New York, at least.” He sat down and sipped his beer.

Ellis always felt that Bernard was physically frightened of him. It showed in the way the man walked around, like a pet dog that is not really allowed indoors, careful to stay an inch or two out of kicking distance.

They talked about the economy for a few minutes, and Ellis drank his beer as fast as he could, then got up to leave. He went to the foot of the staircase and called: “Bye, Petal.”

She came to the top of the stairs. “What about having my ears pierced?”

“Can I think about it?” he said.

“Sure. Bye.”

Gill came down the stairs. “I’ll drive you to the airport,” she said.

Ellis was surprised. “Okay. Thanks.”

When they were on the road Gill said: “She told me she didn’t want to spend a weekend with you.”

“Right.”

“You’re upset, aren’t you?”

“Does it show?”

“To me it does. I used to be married to you.” She paused. “I’m sorry, John.”

“It’s my fault. I didn’t think it through. Before I came along, she had a mommy and a daddy and a home—all any child wants. I’m not
just
superfluous, though. By being around I threaten her happiness. I’m an intruder, a destabilizing factor. That’s why she hugs Bernard in front of me. She doesn’t mean to hurt me. She does it because she’s afraid of losing
him.
And it’s me who makes her afraid.”