House of Sand and Fog: A Novel

by Andre Dubus III

  Please.

  Please?

  IT IS CLEAR TO ME ONCE AGAIN THAT MY NADEREH IS MOST HAPPY when called upon to serve and nurse the weak. While this Kathy Nicolo bathes herself in the washroom, I sit on a stool at the counter and watch my wife carry the steaming dishes of rice and obgoosht to the sofreh laid out upon the carpet in the living-room area. She has surrounded it with our fattest pillows from Tabriz, and she scolds me in Farsi to please remove the newspapers, glue, and mending table from the area, her voice still charged with the sense of purpose that lifted her from the darkness of her bedroom when I told her of the desperate girl under our roof. When I revealed the pistol she slapped me hard upon the shoulder and rushed to put on her robe, telling me in Farsi, “This is your fault, Behrani. You have done this.”

  But since that moment, she has spooned no more blame onto my plate. She is deeply occupied in her tasks, setting the mastvakhiar and bread upon the sofreh, placing a damp towel over the rice pot to keep the steam imprisoned there, and she hums a love song by Googoosh, as if there were not a pistol and fully loaded magazine upon the countertop, as if the woman inside our washroom had not actually attempted to turn it on herself in our drive earlier today. Nonetheless, Nadi’s elevated mood helps my own, for she becomes quite beautiful when she is filled with the feeling she is needed, and I am of course hoping her beauty will further soften this Kathy Nicolo, that, and a traditional Persian meal and our forgiveness of what she had come here to do—well then perhaps, after all this, she and her friend Lester V. Burdon may be more willing to leave us alone, to aim their anger instead at the county tax men who took from her this home.

  In my office, I carefully lay Nadi’s mother’s table on its face upon the floor. Kathy Nicolo is silent within the bathroom and I feel indecent to have taken note of this. I return to the kitchen and living-room area and sit at the counter. Between the steaming dishes upon the floor Nadi has placed three lighted candles in a small candelabra upon the sofreh, and she has extinguished the lamp near the sofa and the bungalow smells wonderfully of meat and saffron rice and cooked tomatoes. I have a large hunger and hope Kathy Nicolo presents herself very soon. I pick up the weapon once again. It is well maintained and smells strongly of gun oil. I pull backward on its ejection mechanism and allow it to slide back into position and the sound it makes startles Nadi and she nearly drops the warmed plates in her hands.

  “Nakon, Massoud.” She tells to me to put the weapon out of sight of the poor girl, and I apologize to my wife for frightening her, but I do not yet put away the pistol for I am thinking of Friday afternoons during the months before Ramadan, when Pourat and I would use the firing range built by the Americans at Mehrabad. We would wear headphones and smoke French cigarettes and we would fire with one hand or two, attempting to shoot holes into the black silouhettes of paper men at the far end of the gallery. Pourat was not comfortable with his weapon, a 9mm pistol such as Kathy Nicolo’s, and he would jerk the trigger and miss the entire target, and his bullet would disappear into the sandbags against the concrete wall. But General Pourat did not care. He laughed at himself, even in the presence of the soldiers posted at the door, and he would give to me the weapon and I would allow him the use of my .45-caliber with the cowboy and rearing horse in its grip and Pourat would shoot even less accurately with that. But I was younger, my eyes clear, and many times I held my breath and squeezed the trigger and made a substantial number of holes in the chests and stomachs of the paper men. Later, Pourat would boast of my shooting to other officers. One year, all the spring season, he called me Duke Behrani after the American actor John Wayne, but of course Pourat’s laugh was always last, for in Farsi Duke sounds very much like our word for liar.

  I lay the weapon and its loaded magazine on a folded paper towel and set it against the flower pots upon the counter. Outdoors, in the twilight fog, comes the familiar metallic rolling sound of my son’s skateboard wheels upon the concrete sidewalk. I begin to prepare myself for speaking with him and when he enters the home wearing only shorts and basketball shoes and a loose black T-shirt, I scold him for both underdressing and for dressing too darkly as well. In the doorway he stands as tall as a man. His black hair is matted wet upon his forehead from the fog and his own sweat, and his eyes survey the sofreh, the four plates there instead of three. Nadi is near to the sink preparing the samovar for later and she calls out in Farsi for Esmail to take off his shoes and then come into the kitchen for washing. She regards me, her hands upon the samovar lid, and she motions with her head for me to commence explaining. Esmail removes his shoes, asks me if the automobile in the driveway does not belong to that woman, Bawbaw-jahn? Again I am faced with the moment of not knowing how much of our situation to share with my son. But then I tell to myself it is his situation as well; the woman Kathy Nicolo has slept in his bed. I ask my tall handsome son of fourteen years to the counter where I show him the unloaded weapon and tell him everything.

  Esmail’s face looks as it did when he was a small boy, before he had his own television, computer, and video games, when he was still interested in stories of people, of hearing me talk of soldiers and their triumphs or failures, hearing his mother or older sister speak with pity of crippled beggars in the marketplace. His eyes would grow larger, more round, and a bit moist with a curiosity so sharp it became nearly fear as well. He appears this way now, and his eyes linger on the weapon as I speak. Twice he turns and looks down the corridor to the closed bathroom door.

  Nadereh approaches him, wiping the samovar lid with a dry cloth. In Farsi she says that the woman is not well. “You must be a gentleman, joon-am. Very kind. Very polite. Very quiet.” She asks him to quickly retrieve long pants, a shirt, and socks from his room and he may dress in her bedroom and wash at the kitchen sink. Our son’s eyes have changed now. They shine with the joy of adventure, and soon he is dressed and clean and sitting upon the floor at the sofreh, the light from the candles in his eyes. I sit there as well, giving to him permission to eat bread, perhaps a toropcheh, a radish. The covered dishes are cooling, the candle sticks burning shorter, and soon the scent of the samovar’s tea will fill the room, so I tell to my wife to please inform Kathy Nicolo of her waiting meal.

  Nadi disappears into the hallway, knocks upon the bathroom door. “Please, hello? Your food is to be eating soon. Hello?”

  My son and I smile at one another over Nadi’s English. We eat bread and listen to her knock again. But there is only silence. Too much silence. And it is in this silence my heart quickens and I stand. I hear Nadi turn the knob and open the door and I am moving down the darkened corridor in my socks, a prowler against my own knowledge of what is to come: I should have taken more precautions with this woman. I curse myself, and I am not surprised when my wife screams and I enter the bathroom and see in the sink the empty pharmaceutical bottle, Kathy Nicolo lying nude in the clear water, her face as white and still as if she were in the deepest of sleeps. Nadi cries out in Farsi that we must hurry, we must make her lose her stomach! I avert my eyes from the woman’s breasts only to see the darkness between her legs. My face becomes very warm, my limbs clumsy. Nadi pulls on her wet arms and Kathy Nicolo opens her eyes, but they are narrow and quite dark, as if she were blind or seeing us only in a dream. Nadereh appears startled, but she regains herself and without turning around orders me in Farsi to leave the room immediately.

  I obey. Esmail is standing there as well and I know he has seen the naked woman but I say nothing of this.

  “What happened, Bawbaw?”

  I tell to him to return to the sofreh and eat his dinner. My son opens his mouth to speak once more but I shake my head and point my arm to the living-room area. He does nearly as I instruct, except he does not eat at the sofreh. He fills his bowl with rice and obgoosht and sits at the counter bar where he has a view of the corridor and me and the bathroom’s closed door. I stand there listening, but the sound of my own heart fills my ears. I turn the knob and open the door a fraction. My wife speaks softly, h
alf in English, half in Farsi, and the woman Kathy Nicolo speaks as well but I cannot understand her words, for they are in the high bewildered tone of a child.

  “Yes, good,” Nadi says. “Een bosheh. Beeah. Very good.”

  There is the sloshing of water, the rustle of a towel, and Kathy Nicolo’s voice telling to my wife she is very beautiful, but the words are thick and her statement sounds more to me as a question would. Nadereh thanks her and tells to Kathy Nicolo that she too is beautiful. Khelee zeebah. Then Nadi says, “Bee-ah injah. Come to here, please.” And I hear only silence. Then Nadereh speaks again: “Yes, your mouth to open. Khelee khobe, very good.” Her voice is near the door and I am certain the two women are upon their knees at the toilet. Kathy Nicolo asks a question but once again I cannot understand the words. They are merged one over the other. She begins to cough and retch and there is a contracted silence, then her vomit hitting the toilet water.

  I return to the living-room area, but the smells of obgoosht and saffron rice no longer attract me. I sit beside my son at the counter, my heart a presence in my hands, and tell to him to finish eating. He fills his spoon with rice. “Bawbaw-jahn?”

  “Yes?”

  “She took Maman’s pills, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  Esmail eats his rice and drinks from his glass of cola. He is excited by all this and I can see he is attempting not to allow this to show upon his face. Perhaps I should telephone an ambulance, but what can they do my Nadi is not already doing? And with them may come policemen as well, more trouble, though we have done nothing wrong. I pull the weapon to me once more, rub my fingers across its black plastic grip.

  “Becaw uh thouth?”

  “Chew your food before you speak, son. I did not understand.”

  Esmail swallows, wiping his face with a napkin. “I said, is it because of the house, Bawbaw? Is that why she keeps trying to kill herself?”

  There is a grain of rice on my son’s chin. His eyes look directly into my own. I brush the rice from his face and tell to him the truth: “Man nehmeedoonam. I do not know.”

  Esmail looks down the corridor to the closed washroom door, then he regards the food upon his plate, the stewed tomatoes and meat, their juices soiling the white rice. “I feel sorry for her. We should have moved, Bawbaw-jahn.”

  I take a deep breath, but my patience is not tested. I am simply very tired, tired of all this turbulence in our life. I want peace. I want peace and silence and no more loud emotion. Esmail does not eat. It is as if he is waiting for my response.

  “Beekhore,” I tell to him. “Eat.” And I leave the counter bar and return to the washroom door to see if Nadi has finished saving this young woman’s life, has perhaps even caught it in her own two hands.

  IN CORONA THE FOG WAS SO THICK THE STREETLAMPS ABOVE THE sidewalk appeared only as dim approximations of light, and as Lester drove slowly by the beach shops and boutiques on both sides of him, he could only just begin to make out the square glow of their windows. In the ten blanketed miles from Montara only two cars had passed him going in the opposite direction, and one had the heavy axle rumble of a half-ton truck, the other the high-rpm whine of a small foreign car. But no Bonneville. He kept picturing Kathy at the storage shed in San Bruno, all of her possessions there. Maybe she’d loaded more things into her car and then was too spooked by the fog to drive. There was no phone at the camp for her to call. She might be at Carl Jr.’s a mile down the road waiting for the air to clear, or she might have gone inside the truck-stop bar. Lester’s stomach grew hot at this image of Kathy, sitting alone in that dark place full of independent truckers coming off days on the road alone, men who wore their loneliness on their shirtsleeves like a badge in need of a polish. And despite himself, Lester began to imagine one of the younger ones—maybe a lanky kid from San Diego or Phoenix—buying her a drink, or more, asking her for a dance. And he felt almost queasy at this, like a high school kid desperate over his first crush. He was ashamed of feeling this way, and he knew then he wasn’t completely sure he trusted Kathy, did he? Under the right circumstances, would she give herself to someone else as completely and quickly as she had to him? But again, he felt ashamed of himself. Right now everything was floating completely out of proportion. Nothing felt grounded or real. There was no proportion at all.

  He would drive to San Bruno and look for Kathy there. It was practically their entire geographical frame of reference. If she wasn’t at the storage shed or the truck-stop bar or the El Rancho Motel, then he would try Carl Jr.’s on the other side of the freeway. And if that didn’t pan out he’d drive south to Millbrae to the Cineplex, where she could possibly be at the movies. Ahead of him in the fog, Corona’s main street ended at the base of the hills and the intersection for the turn to Hillside Boulevard and San Bruno. The blinking yellow traffic light above was so obscured it looked to Lester more like a silent pulse. Kathy would not be at her stolen house up in the hills but the colonel would, and there was no crime in cruising slowly by; he was off-duty and out of uniform.

  Lester downshifted and drove straight through the intersection to Bisgrove Street. The fog thinned slightly as he acclerated up the hill past the partially lighted shapes of houses on his left, the dark woods on his right. His blood seemed to be moving faster, his senses heightened. He rolled his window down and could smell the ocean, the faint scent of something else in the salt water, his fingers after being with Charita, both of them fourteen against the sun-dry fence behind the lumberyard, the way she let him put his hand down her jeans into her underpants, and Lester had only heard of the hole there, never even seen a picture, and he kept rubbing the coarse hair over her pubic bone, waiting for it to open up into what was supposed to be there. They were kissing and his erection was bent inside his pants and she kept arching her back till finally his fingers slipped lower and inside the warm, wet answer to his own question. And there, near the top of the hill, in the light from the floodlamp over the front door, was Kathy’s red Bonneville parked behind the colonel’s white Buick Regal as if it had always been there. The colonel’s light cast out over the small yard and made the low mist covering the ground appear almost like snow.

  Lester pulled the car over onto the soft shoulder against the trees. For a moment he didn’t move, just sat there and looked at the house, his confusion so stark he didn’t feel relieved so much as he did hurt that Kathy had left him out of this, whatever this was, as if it were a party of close friends to which he hadn’t been invited. Through the front window came the light from the kitchen, and Lester saw what looked like a teenage boy sitting at the counter eating. Low on the floor in the front room were candle flames Lester could see just the tops of, but no Kathy, nor colonel, nor his wife.

  Lester was out of the car and across the road before he was even aware of his own movement. He ran bent over toward the relative darkness of the driveway and Kathy’s Bonneville. He cupped his hands to the glass of the passenger’s window and looked inside, though he had no idea what he was searching for, maybe more proof this was really Kathy’s car, and of course it was. In the shadowed light that lay across the front seat he could see her worn canvas pocketbook. It was open and her wallet was open too, a five-dollar bill pulled halfway out like she had taken others in a hurry. And there was something on the floor of the passenger seat, something dark: it was his gun belt, half unrolled, the holster facing up, empty. A low tremor turned on inside him, and Lester glanced back at the house, then opened the passenger door. He smelled gasoline, the interior light coming on, the ignition buzzer too, so he closed the door quietly, pushing against it until it clicked shut, and he crouched low against the car, his heart beating in the cheeks of his face, his legs suddenly too light to hold him. Could she have gone in there with his gun? He heard voices coming from around the corner of the house and at first he thought they were outside and he was preparing himself to bolt right to them or away. But they were a bit muffled, more the sounds you hear from an open window, and he stepped onto the gr
ass off the driveway and followed the voices to a light coming from a shower stall window eight feet above the ground. Lester kept his back to the clapboards. He could hear the colonel’s voice, his and a woman’s, both of them speaking Persian in some kind of heated exchange, though Lester couldn’t be sure it was heated because all Middle Eastern conversations sounded that way to him, like something very important was always at stake. But where was Kathy’s voice? Where was she?

  Then their talking stopped and Lester heard a soft moan. The colonel’s wife began speaking shrilly again but Lester was already running to the rear door of the house. There were tall hedges around the backyard and he shouldered himself between them, the branches scratching his nose and cheek, and he stepped up onto the concrete slab and peered inside the kitchen. He could hear his heart beating in his breath. The boy stood at the end of the counter watching whatever was happening down the hall and Lester could see a small section of the sofa in the candlelit living room, but his eyes were drawn to the flowers on the counter behind the boy, three pots of marigolds, ferns, white and red roses, others he couldn’t name, and there was his service pistol, lying flat on a napkin next to one of the green-foil-covered pots. On a napkin. Like it had just been cleaned. Lester’s confusion was black airless space. He could hardly breathe and he had to move. He gripped the doorknob and gave it a slow turn, but it was locked. He could step back and put his fist through the glass but by the time he got his hand around the knob the colonel or the boy or who knows who else could have his own pistol trained on him. More movement came from inside the house, and Lester could hear the colonel and his wife arguing. The boy was still looking down the corridor, his long arms at his side, his mouth opened slightly. Then Lester heard a muffled thump come from down the hall and he stepped back and kicked in three window panes, the broken glass and splintered wood skittering across the clean linoleum floor of Kathy’s kitchen, the boy jumping back so far he lost his balance and knocked over the short lamp near the couch. Lester got his hand around the inside knob, his fingers fumbling with the lock mechanism as he kept his eyes on the boy, who seemed momentarily pinned against the lamp table. The knob turned, the boy straightened and disappeared down the hallway, and Lester was in the kitchen, moving quickly through the smells of cooked meat and brewed tea and old flowers. He slipped on a glass shard and fell forward into the Formica countertop, grabbing his pistol and still-loaded magazine, pushing the clip into the handle, then pulling back once on the slide and sending one into the firing chamber, thumbing the safety off.