by André Aciman
To him Ladino was a form of cackling, and he called his neighbors’ home a chicken coop, a poulailler, referring to them as the “owners” of the “henhouse,” not knowing that they had come to regard his inability to enter into their world with the stately arrogance of erstwhile Ottoman masters. “Syrian hypocrite” and “dirty Turk” were bandied about behind everyone’s back, all of which inevitably devolved late one Sunday afternoon, as both men were returning from their respective cafés, into a face-to-face confrontation in which the degenerate turc barbare called the juif arabe a “dirty, scoundrel Jew.” Stunned, the bicycle shop owner, who was quite devout, said thank you, thank you, which was how the insulted taught the insultor a lesson in good manners, reminding the pool hall owner that he was truly tempted to insult him back but had decided otherwise, seeing that the Turk’s own wife, as the entire neighborhood could hear clearly enough when the Princess lost her temper, did so better than anyone else in the world.
Everyone was sufficiently hurt and shamed, including the Princess, who found herself implicated in a quarrel that should have stayed strictly between the men. Monsieur Jacques vowed never to set foot chez les barbares, Monsieur Albert thanked him for staying out of people’s homes, and both resolved never to say bonjour whenever they happened to meet on Rue Memphis. Only the Saint was left untouched, though she was the most perturbed of the four, and would continue to do everything to bring about a reconciliation between both families. “You may say whatever crosses your mind when you’re angry, Monsieur Albert,” she chided, a few days after the incident, “but that—never! Never!” she repeated, her nether lip quivering, her eyes welling up. Her simple, stainless soul had peered into an ugly, scurrilous world from which her strict upbringing had always protected her.
“But he didn’t mean anything by it,” the Princess said to Monsieur Jacques, trying as well to repair the damage. “Do you think the kettle means anything when it goes about calling other kettles black? How could it if it’s a kettle itself?”
“How could it, madame? Easily. First, by forgetting it’s black. Then by forgetting it’s a kettle in the first place—which it should be proud of being, considering such kettles don’t survive five thousand years unless there’s a good God watching over them. And let me tell you something else, Madame Esther: any kettle that slanders its own kind is no kettle worthy of my home, and certainly not of God’s kitchen!”
“Monsieur Jacques, don’t get carried away now. I was only speaking about a sixty-year-old man who is very sick and to whom life has been good in such small doses you’d think God’s kindness was squeezed out of an eye dropper. He is a very unhappy and bitter man. His is an old kettle with hardly a whistle left to it.”
“The whistle is quite intact, thank you very much,” said the infidel Turk when the Saint reported this conversation to him and, as usual, was lured into playing cards with him. “My wife should be the last to judge such things, seeing she is the most unmusical woman in the world.”
“But she loves to hear me play the piano,” the Saint responded.
“I wasn’t talking about piano music.”
The Saint paused.
“Oh, I see,” she said.
“No, you don’t,” he was about to reply but caught himself and said, “You see through everything, don’t you, down into the most hidden recesses of the heart. And yet you never let on that you do. Meanwhile you’ve figured us all out, you with that dangerous flair of yours.” To which she replied with her favorite little apothegm. “I may not be learned, Monsieur Albert, but I am sharp, sharp enough to see that you are poking fun at me right now.” She sorted out cards and produced a winning combination. “Thank God I can win at cards, for otherwise you would think me a real dolt.”
“Madame Adèle, where were you when I was a young man?”
“Monsieur Albert, don’t speak like that. God gave each of us the life we deserve. You yours, and me mine.”
“You yours, and me mine,” he mimicked as he shuffled the cards. “Do you think we can persuade Him to reserve a berth for you in my cabin when it’s time to take the long journey?”
“When the time comes for that, I want to return to my parents.”
“Not to Monsieur Jacques?”
“Monsieur Jacques has given me his life. His afterlife he can give someone else.”
She pondered her cards a moment. “Will your wife be joining you in the afterlife?” she said with a lambent tremor on her lips, averting her eyes.
“Jealous as she is—”
“Who, your wife? How little you know women, Monsieur Albert.”
“And how little you know my wife! She is so spiteful that if she were to die before me, she would immediately send for me so as never to allow me to forget I was ever married to her.”
Indeed, the Princess’s jealousy had nothing to do with love. The more she disliked her husband, and the more he fled from her, the more she was afraid of losing him. She was a model of dutiful solicitude because she wished him dead in small doses every day—which is how he loathed her, with the scrupulous devotion of weak, unfaithful husbands. She was attentive to his minutest needs: his specially brewed coffee in the morning, his ration of spinach pastries at noon, her special consommés for his special rice, the dried fruit sauce for his lean meats, his lightly starched shirts and neatly pressed handkerchiefs whose creases she was forever smoothing; down to the way she would decorate his plate with assorted cheeses, dips, and olives when it was time for his raki at night—in all this, she was the most punctilious of wives, begrudging him nothing, yet with every gesture reminding him that she had brought nothing into his life save those things he had never asked for. Ironically, he had far greater need of her love—of which she had some—than she had of his—of which there was none.
“You should never say such things about her,” said the Saint, who was always eager to come to anyone’s defense, partly because she was kind and didn’t like to encourage slander, but also because her little rebukes always seemed to force people to intensify their original indictments of others.
“She’s been the perfect wife for you: your cook, your maid, your nurse, your seamstress, your barber, your mother even. How many times has she saved you from certain ruin? She’s the most intelligent woman on Rue Memphis.”
“I know,” he said turning to the Saint with doleful sarcasm in his eyes. “I know. God gave her the biggest brain in the world. But he gave her nothing else. In her company even an iceberg would catch cold.”
At that moment the Princess returned from her daily visit with her siblings. “How could you two be playing cards in the dark like this?”
“Romance,” explained the husband without looking up.
“But didn’t you hear the news?”
“What news?”
“The war is over.”
To celebrate the armistice, the Princess, who had just walked in with Madame Dalmedigo, decided to improvise a real tea, with meringue, fig and date jams, petits fours, and homemade biscuits, which she kept under lock and key in one of the many cupboards in the pantry. Another neighbor, Arlette Joanides, who was walking past their veranda with her daughter Micheline, was stopped, told of the news, and summarily invited for tea. Half an hour later, Aunt Flora, her mother, Marie Cantacouzenos, and Fortunée Lombroso, still later joined by Maurice Franco and Liliane Arditi, had come also —so that, when Monsieur Jacques arrived home from work, he was informed by his daughter that her mother was still visiting across the street. “Then go fetch her and tell her, once and for all, that her place is here”—indicating their dark and empty living room—“and not there,” pointing to the henhouse. The families were back on speaking terms, but there always remained a certain froid between the men. The eighteen-year-old daughter, who had been reading a novel, slipped a cardigan over her shoulders, rushed downstairs, and in a second was ringing at their neighbor’s door. “I’ve come to tell my mother that my father wants her to come home now.” “Come in and don’t be si
lly. Where are we, in the Middle Ages?” cried the Princess, who by now had learned to understand the deaf girl’s speech. “We’re having tea and playing cards, come in.”
The young girl came in but continued to linger near the doorway.
“Your father wants me to be home, doesn’t he?” asked the Saint as soon as she caught sight of her daughter standing awkwardly outside the living room.
The girl nodded. The Princess thrust a cup and saucer in the girl’s hands, which she accepted absentmindedly.
“A real tyrant, that’s what he is,” said the Princess’s husband.
“You men are all tyrants,” rejoined Arlette Joanides.
“And what are women, then?” he asked, turning to Monsieur Franco.
“To marry men like you one has to be a fool,” said one of the women.
“Anyone who marries is a fool,” said the Princess’s husband. “But those who stay married after realizing their mistake are criminally stupid.”
“Stop these roguish airs and play,” snapped the Princess to her husband.
“Is what I say false?” he asked the young girl who was now sitting next to her mother.
She made no response.
“How like a woman. Doesn’t answer when it’s not convenient.”
“All this banter about women!” said one of the women, “but when you need us to hem a sleeve so you can go out and impress your twopenny waitresses, you come crawling to us. Marriage!”
“Marriage, indeed!” the Princess’s husband jumped in. “Even life sentences are commuted. But marriage, you have to die first before they loosen that noose.”
“Oh, stop all this nonsense and play your hand,” said the Princess.
At that moment the doorbell rang.
“Will someone open the door?” asked the Princess. The Saint glanced at her daughter and signaled to her to open the door. The girl did as asked and found a man standing there, staring at her.
“Yes?” she asked.
For a moment he started to smile. Then he asked if Madame Something-or-other was in.
He didn’t make out what she said, but she motioned him to wait on the landing. Then, before he knew it, she shut the door in his face and rushed to tell the Princess there was a man asking to see someone.
“A man?” she started.
When the Princess finally stood up and opened the door she burst out laughing. “But it’s my son,” she shouted. “Your daughter wouldn’t let him in,” she said, turning to the Saint. Everyone laughed.
The girl blushed repeatedly.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“But don’t worry, dear, he tricked you, that’s all,” said the Saint to her daughter.
The Princess apologized again for her son’s behavior, while the girl, probably to make up for her gaffe, silently offered to take his raincoat. Then the girl realized she did not know where to hang it and gave it back to him, smiling apologetically without saying a word. Unlike her father, he did not remove his jacket together with his raincoat so as to hang both on the same hanger. He kept his jacket on, checking his watch twice in the space of five minutes, tucking it back into his vest pocket, looking very pleased with himself.
“Who’s winning?” he asked.
“Me, of course,” replied Madame Lombroso.
The servant brought the young man tea, and he took it, turning to the newspaper that was hanging on the arm of the sofa.
“You heard?” asked his mother.
“Yes, I heard. It means the British army won’t be buying from us any longer. Not exactly thrilling news.”
“Always looking at the darker side of things,” said Arlette Joanides.
“It’s a sign of intelligence, madame,” said the Saint, coming to his defense.
The girl sat quietly next to the Saint, looking over her mother’s shoulder while the mother fanned out her cards. Once in a while the young girl would remind her that her father had sent for her. “I know, I know,” her mother would answer, as though trying to stave off an unpleasant thought.
“See what happens when you marry?” said the Princess’s husband, all the while staring at his new hand. “You can’t even play cards.” Then, as an afterthought, he added, “Or maybe all you can do is play cards.”
“Play,” came his wife’s rebuke.
“No, no, let him be as bitter as he wants, that won’t change the fact that he’s losing,” Aunt Flora taunted.
“Losing to you never makes one bitter,” he replied without lifting his head. “But losing to her,” he indicated the Saint, “is a devastating affair.”
“Because he thinks I’m stupid,” said the Saint. “Let him think whatever he pleases. I may not be learned, but I’m very sharp, and I’ll show him who’s stupid tonight.”
“With your luck tonight, it’s no great feat to appear a genius,” he added.
“Luck and a few other things as well.” The Saint indicated her nose.
“Ah, yes, the nose. The nose, ladies and gentlemen!”
“Let him rant all he wants—but am I listening to him? No.”
“I would come to my mother’s defense if I were you,” said the Princess’s son to the Saint’s daughter.
The girl lifted up her face, smiled politely, and shook her puzzled head as if to say it was not her place to speak on such matters.
“Such discretion,” commented the son after all the guests had left that evening. “Never a misplaced syllable, always sweet, and so very gentle. Where have they been keeping her all these years?”
“Don’t you know Syrian Jews?” his father asked, helping his wife clear the cards off the table. “Stealthy to the bone, every one of them, including her, don’t you worry.”
“She’s serene and priceless, she is,” added the Princess. “And rich too. Her father’s in bicycles.”
“She’s stunning,” continued her son.
“Stunning or not, it still wasn’t kind of you to play that nasty trick on her at the door. You should have apologized.”
“But I did apologize. So I played a little trick on her—”
“It would be just like you not to have noticed,” she said.
“Noticed what?” he asked.
“Noticed that she’s deaf.”
“But I spoke to her—”
“Deaf all the same. That loud voice you hear from across the street is hers.”
The son looked totally bewildered. His mother watched him and, reading his mind, hastily added, “Stay away. She’s a good girl.”
Soon someone rang at the door; it was the friend her son had been expecting for more than an hour.
“They’re celebrating at the French Consulate tonight. I’ve been invited.”
“But I haven’t.”
“It’s all right, I’m inviting you now. Hurry. Everyone is celebrating.”
“Won’t it be too crowded, though?”
“Of course it will be too crowded, come on.”
When he returned late that night, my father wrote in his diary that he had finally met her. He did not portray her as the woman of his dreams, nor as the most beautiful, nor did he describe any of her features. Superstitious as ever, he even avoided mentioning her name. She was simply and so clearly her that the need to capture her on paper or to probe the more elusive aspects of her personality proved too elaborate a task for the man who had merely written: I want to think of her. He did not write what he felt upon first setting eyes on her or what he thought of each time he caught his mind drifting toward her. He merely described her gray skirt and maroon cardigan and the way she crossed her legs when she sat behind her mother, the skin of her knee pressed against the edge of the card table as she kept her eyes glued to her mother’s cards. At one point she had smiled when she caught him looking at her, a kind, indulgent smile filled with languor and mild apology.
She tapped him on the shoulder later that evening on the crowded patio of the French Consulate. People brimmed over into the garden and onto the street, where th
e city’s French, Greek, Jewish, and Italian youth were gathered about in a chaos of standing bicycles and car horns, singing. Everyone had come to celebrate. The same, it appeared, was happening farther off at the Italian and British consulates.
“You’re not dancing?” she asked, when he turned around. He couldn’t understand a word she said.
“Isn’t it too crowded?” he said, thinking she had asked him to dance. Do the deaf dance? he thought, conjuring a grotesque picture of a waltz danced like a tango.
“It’s such a wonderful evening,” she said. She was wearing a sleeveless white cotton dress, a thin necklace, and white shoes, her ruddy tanned skin glistening in the evening light. With a touch of makeup on, and her wet hair combed back, she looked older and more spirited than the shy neighbor’s daughter who all during her visit earlier that evening had kept her schoolgirl eyes riveted to her pleated skirt and her mother’s cards. There was even a suggestion of self-conscious elegance in the way she carried herself, holding her champagne glass with both hands, her elbows almost resting on her hips.
Yet the absence of stockings and a handbag and the white outline of what must have been a missing man’s watch on her tanned wrist betrayed a hastily dressed or vaguely underdressed quality, as if after spending all day at the beach, with barely a few minutes to make it to the ball, she had put on the first thing that came her way without drying her hair or feet. Her toes were probably still lined with sand. Somewhere, he thought, watching the dimmed evening lights play off the liquid sheen of her white gabardine dress, was a wet bathing suit, hurriedly taken off and left crumpled on a wooden bench in a friend’s cabin.
“Did you come all by yourself?” he asked, making sure he was facing her when he spoke.
“No, with friends.” Perhaps she wanted to dance.
“Would I know them?” he asked.
“No, but I’ll introduce you,” she said, not thinking he had no interest, taking his hand as she threaded what seemed an endless path through the crowd until they reached the other end of the large terrace, where a group of young men was waiting for her. One of them, leaning against the balustrade, was holding a maroon cardigan very much like the one she had worn earlier in his parents’ home. Was he holding it for her, or had she borrowed it earlier that day and given it back to him? She made the introductions, describing how she had kept her neighbor’s son waiting outside his own home. Everyone laughed—not at her error, this time, but at the way she had closed the door in his face.
