Authors: Ahdaf Soueif
The Map of Love (6 page)
If I could believe that he died for a noble cause —
What’s done is done, I want to tell her. How can you reach someone who does not want to be reached? That door we spend lifetimes battering ourselves against — turn away, go out, go riding, go driving, eat, do charity work, take a tonic, travel …
And it is in Rome, at the Teatro Costanzi, on 14 January, that Anna, gripped by the soaring notes and by Floria’s bewildered and impassioned grief, feels the answering sorrow swell and rise within her and presses her handkerchief to her mouth as the terrible emptiness fills mercifully with pain:
It was as though I had been holding myself very still, holding a door shut, holding something down; something which the music swelled and strengthened until it broke through. And for many days later, although I could not put my feelings into words, much less write them down in this journal, it was as though I felt that music coursing through my body and as it went, like a river in full flood, it churned up its bed and its banks, and I was most ill with a fever and — poor Caroline tells me — delirious and impossible for many days till one morning I woke up and — I had not quite returned to the world, but I had seen the door by which I might return.
‘How long did it take her?’ asks Isabel. ‘Ten months?’
‘Life was slower then.’
‘I guess.’
She stretches, and her long, pale arms seem to catch the light of the moon high up in the clear, black sky. She yawns, brings her arms down and ruffles her hair.
‘I’m keeping you up?’
I shake my head: I never sleep before two.
‘It’s not common, is it, for a person, a woman, to live alone? Here in Egypt?’
‘No. But it’s happening, more and more.’
Once upon a time I lived with a family. A husband and children. That was in England. In a house out of a Victorian novel, with stairs and fireplaces and floral cornices round the ceilings, and the sound of passing trains muffled by the lush trees at the bottom of the long garden. I learned about the seasons. I learned that the small clusters of fleshy green leaves would open into blue and white crocus, that the snowdrops appeared overnight, that daffodils should be cut but tulips shouldn’t, that — with luck and care — the rose bushes would blossom twice, and that at winter’s end, you could see on the bare, gnarled branches the tiny, tight buds whose pale, centred speck of green told of the leafy abundance that was yet to come.
Today, out of the window, I saw the pink carpet under the copper beech. The tree had shed all its flowers and I had not even seen it blossom. But the pink cherry was gloriously in bloom and I went out and walked around the garden and found the foxgloves in their secret places and the forget-me-nots with their golden hearts intact and then, as I looked up at the copper beech, I found, nestled in a dark corner under the spreading branches, one last cluster of blossom like a small pink chandelier and I was overcome with gratitude as though it had stayed there to say to me, Look! It is not too late.
Anna mends. The face that looks up at me as I turn from the kettle in the kitchen is no longer quite so haunted, quite so pale. The step I hear in my corridor is quicker and lighter, the rustle of the silk dress more crisp.
I walked to the Museum and I went to see the paintings. I cannot pretend to a wholly untroubled mind — nor would it be proper
now to have one — but I was able, once more, to take pleasure in the wondrous colours, the tranquillity, the contentment with which they are infused. And I wondered, as I had wondered before, is that a world which truly exists?
Something there is moves me to love, and I
Do know I love, but know not how, nor why.
Alexander Brome, c. 1645
New York City, March 1997
How can it strike so suddenly? Without warning, without preparation? Should it not grow on you, taking its time, so that when the moment comes when you think ‘I love’, you know — or at least you imagine you know — what it is you love? How can it be that a set of the shoulders, the rhythm of a stride, the shadow of a strand of hair falling on a forehead can cause the tides of the heart to ebb and to flow?
Which had come first, the gentle lurch as her heart missed a beat or the sight of him in the doorway? Isabel had looked down at the table: her knife and spoon lay at attention, solid and still. Drooping elegantly over the edge of the crested white plate, the corner of her folded pink napkin barely touched the shining, silver-plated steel. She closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. When she looked up my brother was halfway across the restaurant, his hand raised in greeting — then his coat and briefcase were in the third chair and the menu was in his hands.
‘Have you ordered? Have you been here long? I’m not late, am I? What
is
the time?’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I am, I guess. A few minutes. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I couldn’t get away. What will you have? Are you hungry? I hope you are. I am.’
His hands holding the menu. One hand reaching across the table to pat hers, briefly.
* * *
‘You know —’ he had leaned back in his seat, wiped the corners of his mouth with his napkin — ‘I feel as if I know you from somewhere — before I mean.’
Watching him, her head to one side, she had smiled.
‘No, seriously.’ He waved his hand, a brief gesture of dismissal, as though to say, This is not a line, I am not flirting with you. ‘There’s something, I don’t know what it is —’
‘A previous life?’
He spread his hands, smiled, but the puzzled look stayed in his eyes.
My brother. As Isabel talks I can see him. She doesn’t have to describe the way he walks into a room, the energy crackling off him, the heads turning to look. He walks into every room the way he walks down that long aisle through the stalls, striding, headlong, not a moment to lose. Even at the podium he gives the house the briefest of bows before turning to his orchestra: to work. And it is only at the end, when the stillness has erupted into a roar of applause and he has turned semi-dazed to face them that — after a moment — he seems to see the audience, and then there comes the big smile that catches at the heart, the sweeping bow, the great expansive gesture taking in both the orchestra and the house, the hands clasped above the head. My brother, who can make you feel special simply by recognising you across a room and who flew over at the sound of my voice on the telephone, and sat with me and held me through that long night and helped me see what I had to do; helped me be my better self.
Isabel is in love with him. And I don’t blame her. She can’t help it. Lots of women couldn’t. And as far as I can see, it never did them any harm.
‘Do you ever go back?’ she asked over coffee, after he had given her names, addresses, telephone numbers.
‘Where? To Egypt? Yes, of course. Not as often as I would wish. But …’ Again the expressive hands, the rueful smile.
‘Do you think of yourself as Egyptian? I’m sorry, this is
personal.’ She had surprised herself with the question but he answered easily.
‘Yes. And American. And Palestinian. I have no problem with identity.’
‘You’re lucky.’
Or unlucky. Look, I have to go.’ The hand raised, this time to get the bill.
‘May I …?’ she offers, hesitant because he — and indeed:
‘No, no. Of course not. Absolutely not.’
‘After all, I
have
been picking your brains.’
‘So what? You want to pay for my brains?’ This somewhat sharply — and then the smile: ‘No. That’s all right, my dear. It was a pleasure.’
‘Well, you must let me …’
‘What? Let you what?’ he asks as she hesitates.
‘Perhaps another time
I
could take
you
out.’
A pause.
‘Would you like to do that?’
‘Yes,’ she says quietly. ‘Yes, I would.’
He looks at her, then nods his head briefly, deciding. ‘Fine. Good. I’ll call you.’
When she leaves the restaurant that Tuesday afternoon in March, she ties the belt of her long camel coat tight around her waist, turns up the collar, thrusts her hands into her pockets, and walks. The entrance of
MOMA
is lit and welcoming. She turns into the doorway and walks around aimlessly. You can do that in a museum. Not thinking, just being. When she comes to, she is standing in front of a Miró. It makes sense. The vivid blue, the bright one-eyed creatures floating, darting, alert, untethered. Out in the museum shop she buys a postcard. And now the hell of waiting for him to call.
‘Mother, I’ve met someone. A man …’
Isabel is uneasy. She can’t get used to seeing her mother here, in this room. There is nothing wrong with the room — except that it is completely different from any room Jasmine
would ever have chosen to inhabit: no flowers, no cushions, no music, no paintings, no small nonsensical bits of silver and crystal to catch the light and beam it back on to veined marble or polished wood. Nothing. Not even a photograph in a gilt frame to speak of a life beyond this place. And Jasmine is still and quiet, in a faded blue housecoat with an edge of nightdress showing white below the hem.
‘I like him a lot’, Isabel says. ‘You know, I think you’d like him too. You probably know him — he’s famous. I just wanted to tell you. He’s older than me. Well, quite a lot older. He’s actually in his fifties but you’d think he was forty. He
looks
forty. He’s tall, and he’s got black hair, greying at the temples, very distinguished. And dark, dark eyes, so dark that you think they’re deep-set, but they’re not.’
Jasmine’s soft white hair is cut short in a boyish brush. It makes Isabel think of a new-hatched chick, she can’t imagine why. She scans her memory searching for a moment when she might have seen a new-hatched chick, and comes up with a television image: an ad for — she can’t remember what. They say Jasmine had got hold of some scissors and had cut off great chunks of what had become an incongruously full head of hair, and then they had tidied it up. We thought it would be better this way, they said. Isabel doesn’t know whether to believe them — about her mother’s cutting it off. Jasmine had always been proud of her hair. This would be easier to keep clean and tidy; no more brushing, no more fiddling with grips. She had been angry, then sad. Jasmine is even further now from the mother she knows. She wonders whether the hair feels soft or spiky. But if she should try to touch it — if she comes at all close — her mother gets fidgety, worried, frightened. Better to leave things as they are: Jasmine sitting calm and smiling in the grey leather armchair, Isabel on the edge of the bed facing her.
‘Mother.’ Isabel leans forward. ‘Mother, dear, are you all right?’
A shadow of uncertainty passes over Jasmine’s face. Her hands unfold themselves from her lap and hover above the
armrests as though preparing to descend, to lever her up and away. Fine hands still, despite the sprinkling of liver spots. Jonathan, Isabel’s father, had had liver spots too in his last years. The wedding band is on the left hand, the other rings are gone, the nails cut short and square. Isabel leans back and the hands touch down but the eyes are still uncertain.
‘This is a lovely room,’ says Isabel, trying to sound bright and reassuring. She does not add ‘isn’t it?’ which would have thrown her mother back into confusion.
‘Jonathan never really liked it here,’ says Jasmine. She starts to stroke the arm of her chair.
And now it is Isabel who is confused. ‘He didn’t?’ she asks cautiously.
‘No.’ An emphatic shake of the head. ‘No, he didn’t. Oh, he did his job. He did what he had to do. He always did that. But he never felt comfortable. He never really liked the British. He thought they rather despised Americans. He never made friends. Apart from me. But that was different, he said, since I was only a quarter British. I’m not so sure, though. He once said that he could never tell what I was thinking.’
‘Was that true?’
‘What?’
‘That he — that Jonathan could never tell what you were thinking?’
‘Oh, yes. Yes, it was true.’
‘Could you tell what
he
was thinking?’
‘Mostly, but then he was American — and a man.’
For a moment the old smile lights up the faded violet eyes and the ghost of vanished beauty breathes over Jasmine’s face. The hand does not stop its rhythmic caress of the chair arm. Isabel feels her heart contract and turns to the window. The Hudson lies steel grey in the chill March sunshine.
‘I wanted to tell you about this man. Mother?’ she starts again. ‘I met him at a dinner party and I’ve only seen him once since. He’s divorced. His kids are grown-up. He’s a musician — a conductor. World class. The Philharmonic and everything.
He has wonderful hands. And he writes books. I think I’m in love with him.’
Jasmine is smiling. Looking at her. Does she see her? What does she see?
Oh, I wish Daddy was here!’ Isabel buries her face in her hands. Her mother’s hand strokes the chair.
Old people are starved of touch: no husband, no lover, no child to slip a hand into a hand, to plant sticky kisses on nose and cheek and mouth, to snuggle and fit into the curves of the body. I watched my grandmother — my mother’s mother — in her last years: her hand, the skin drawn parchmentlike over the bones, stroking, stroking, the chairs, the table, the bedspread.
‘Anyway —’ Isabel collects herself, shakes out her hair, runs her fingers through it — ‘I don’t know what he feels about me. When I’m with him I feel all his attention concentrated on me. I feel this — this energy between us. But I don’t know if he even thinks about me when I’m not there.’ She looks sadly at her mother. ‘I’m not sure what I should do.’
‘I’ve given him up, of course,’ Jasmine says. ‘It was the only thing to do. He’s very young, you see. Such eyes! He reminds me of Valentine, of course. I don’t need to be told that; I’ve known it all along, from the moment I saw him. Maybe that’s why I took him in. I don’t remember what it was, Algeria or CND or something — there were so many demonstrations that summer. But he was hurt. He was in danger and I took him in. No one could touch him then; he was on American territory — although he didn’t know it. Jonathan was away and I took him in and I dressed the cut on his head. It was already swelling up into a horrid bruise. And he was so fired up with the state of the world and how he was going to change it all — he and his friends. He was so young. I sat by his bed, and later, when he was asleep, I got in next to him. I couldn’t help myself. Well. There we are. I went to his place later, twice. But then I knew I had to give
him up. But it’s been hard. It’s been like losing Valentine all over again.’