House of Sand and Fog: A Novel

by Andre Dubus III

  “Thugs: these are people who hurt others merely to get things they want. Criminals, Esmail. Bad people.”

  My son is quiet for many moments, and I am grateful for the silence, the peace. Tomorrow I will pretend to do as Lester V. Burdon instructs, and when my family and I are safely away, I will report Mr. Burdon to his superior officers. I will press charges and he will lose everything, and we will sell the bungalow at a profit, then go where he cannot find us.

  “Bawbaw?”

  “Yes?”

  Esmail sits up in the bath. His dark hand appears on the porcelain beside my arm, but he does not speak.

  “What is it, Esmail?”

  “Aren’t we being thugs? Hurting that woman for her house?”

  My face grows immediately warm. “No. We have done nothing wrong. Nothing.”

  “Nakon, Behrani.” My wife’s face turns upward from the floor, a pale shape in the darkness. “Your son speaks only truth. You should have never kept this girl’s home. You have done this to us—”

  “Khafesho! Shut up!” I stand but have no place to move. I look down at the floor and into the bath, at the shadows that are my wife and son. “Do you think I do all this for me? I could live in the street. I do this for you, Esmail, because I am your father and you will take what I give you. Do you think that woman out there is blameless? This gendeh who comes here drunk to die? Do you think she did nothing to help her lose her own home? It is I who have done nothing. I simply purchased a property that can give my son a future. Is it I who has locked us in this toilet? Is it I who forced us from our old life, Nadi? Tell to me. What is it I have done except provide for my family? I think of nothing else. Ever. Ever, Nadereh. Only this. Only you. So close your mouths, both of you. You will show me respect or—”

  “What, Behrani?” My wife stands quickly and I hear her fast breath, smell in it the old tea and obgoosht. “Will you call SAVAK? Tell to them we are not respectful? Do not throw these stones at us; they are lies. You want this home for you. You. You could never live in the street because there no one would respect you, Behrani, and you need everyone to respect you, even strangers must respect you. Here your uniform means nothing and this is killing you—”

  “Do not talk to me of this when it is you who made us spend all our money to impress people we do not know—”

  “For Soraya, yes. For her.”

  “But you—”

  “But I nothing. I want only my children to be happy, Behrani. I do not care of anything else.”

  “Maman, Bawbaw, please don’t fight, please don’t make noise.” Es-mail is standing in the bath, his tall body only darkness against the tile wall beneath the panjare. His voice is high with fear and I feel my rafigh, Pourat, forced to watch his own son stand against such a wall; my anger leaves me as quickly as water from a broken urn.

  “Yes, joon-am, you are right. We must keep our heads. Lie down and rest.”

  “I can’t, Bawbaw. What are you going to do?”

  “Shh, Farsi only,” I whisper. “Lie down.” I sit upon the bath’s edge while my son carefully rests his feet once again on the wall of faucets and knobs. Behind me, Nadereh seats herself upon the closed toilet and exhales loudly. She rests her face in her hands and I am certain she has brought on one of her headaches, but for the moment I do not care.

  “Bawbaw?”

  “Joon-am.”

  “Were you a Savaki?”

  “Of course not. You know I was not. Please do not even think this.”

  “But you knew them, right?”

  “Yes, I knew some of those men.”

  “Did you meet them at Shahanshah’s palace?”

  “No, my son.” I again see Pourat’s nephew Bijan as we sat around the vodka and mastvakhiar, the reflection of firelight in his drunk eyes, eyes as dark and indifferent as a dog’s.

  “You know Soraya’s new brother-in-law, Bawbaw?”

  “Yes?”

  “He said it was SAVAK’s fault we got kicked out of our country, because they killed too many people. Is that true?”

  “I do not know, Esmail. Rest. Tomorrow we must have our energy, our concentration.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  I breathe deeply, allowing my answer to come with my breath. “We pretend that man is in charge of the situation, that is what we do. We let him think this, and when he is not looking, we defeat him.”

  “How?”

  “Courage. He is attempting to frighten us away, but we will not be frightened, will we, joon-am?”

  “I’m not scared.” Esmail folds his arms in front of him.

  “Good, good. But pesaram, my son, tomorrow I want you to appear frightened. I want you to do whatever that man tells to you.”

  “Why?”

  I do not tell my son my primary reason, that I fear my child may attempt something youthful and heroic that may provoke Burdon to rash action. “Because if he thinks he has frightened us, he may feel secure to leave us alone.”

  “You mean he thinks we’ll be too scared to try anything even when he’s gone?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “No problem, Bawbaw-jahn.”

  I kiss my son on his head. His hair smells of the sea. “Good night, my son.” I sit once more upon the floor beside the bath. Esmail is quiet a few moments. Nadereh lies silently down upon her towels.

  “Bawbaw?”

  “Shh-shh. Sleep. Rest.”

  “Soraya’s brother-in-law said the Shah ordered SAVAK to kill families, the kids too, just because the father read certain books.”

  “Soraya’s brother-in-law is stupid. He knows nothing. Now please, sleep.”

  “But he also said—”

  “Saket bosh, sleep.”

  “Okay, Bawbaw. Good night.”

  Outdoors the night is still and I do not know if the fog has disappeared or not, but I suspect it has not. No sounds of any kind come through the panjare, not the call of a bird, not the working of an insect, not the fall of a dead pine twig in the woodland across the street. Not even the bark of a dog down the hill in the village, or the passing of a lone automobile, and so I of course imagine the entire land covered in a thick fog blanket, one that hides and protects and disguises, one that allows lies to live on untested. How can I tell to my son I have heard dozens of these stories as well? How can I tell to him that I drank vodka with a Savaki at the Pourats’ home? How can I tell to Esmail that I am sorry for yelling at him without my voice betraying this heat in my face, this feeling in my blood that if it was only me in this locked toilet and not my wife and son, then I would finally be receiving what I deserved, that the time had come for Colonel Massoud Amir Behrani to stand at the wall, to stand at full attention and face his accusers.

  LESTER PULLED INTO THE PARKING COMPOUND BEHIND THE HALL OF Justice just as Lieutenant Alvarez was locking his jeep, his short hair combed back wet from his postrun shower, his briefcase hanging against his ironed pant leg. Lester parked out of sight in the motor pool between two K-9 cruisers and waited for Alvarez to go inside. It was only a quarter to eight, fifteen minutes before Internal Affairs opened, and Lester wanted to give the lieutenant time to hear his voice mail, to get Lester’s message from last night. He checked himself in the rearview mirror; his own hair was wet from the Purisima spring at the fish camp, and he’d nicked his chin shaving without a mirror. He’d pushed a folded bit of toilet paper against it to catch the blood, and now it was a dry red speck on his face. His eyes were small and bloodshot from no sleep, there was a light scratch on his nose from the backyard hedge he’d shouldered his way through last night, and the slacks he’d pulled from his suitcase needed ironing, though the blue short-sleeved polo shirt he wore looked all right. Anyway, it didn’t matter. This slightly disheveled look might even help his story, which was the truth: My wife and I are having serious problems, Lieutenant. I just couldn’t get away, sir. Though Lester still didn’t know what he was going to say about the colonel.

  Just before dawn
this morning, while Kathy and his prisoners slept, he sat at her kitchen counter and wrote:

  Dearest Kathy,

  I know this all looks very dramatic and wrong but the way it all came together seems inevitable now. I think they’re finally going to clear out. Please do not let them out until I get back. (And don’t let them know I’m not in the house.) I have to go into Redwood City. Be back by nine. You should drink plenty of water and juice.

  See you then,

  Les

  —If you need to relieve yourself, I recommend the backyard!

  Lester had folded the paper once. On the back was Persian handwriting, and he crossed it out and wrote Kathy’s name in capital letters. He wondered if he’d written too little about what she’d tried to do to herself last night, if his directions on what she should drink would look like he was afraid to go any deeper than that, when the truth was he wanted to know more now than he ever had; he wanted to go so deeply inside her he would hardly even be him anymore. After his last talk with the colonel through the bathroom door, Lester had spent the rest of the night in a chair by Kathy’s bed. Her hair was fanned out on the pillow, and in the lamplight her color was better. There was more pink in her cheeks, her lips didn’t seem as dark, and all he wanted to do was kiss them, to taste again her tongue and teeth, to be inside her completely, all of him.

  But first, there was having to slip himself free of his entanglement with this Iranian colonel and his family, coming up with something credible this morning for Alvarez, though the last thing Lester felt comfortable doing was leaving this house. What if Kathy woke and stumbled to the bathroom without reading the note and then let them all out? Or what if she kept them all locked up but the colonel realized Lester and his gun were no longer in the house? Would he encourage the family to start screaming for help? But what was the alternative? Lester had disobeyed a direct order from an LT in Internal Affairs, then left a message on his machine saying he’d be in his office first thing this morning to explain everything. If Lester didn’t show again, then he would absolutely lose all credibility and any chance to talk away his incident with the colonel. What’s more, Alvarez, who got paid to have a nose for worse-case scenarios, could want to speak with the colonel again, could call him or even send out a patrol car.

  Lester left Kathy’s note on the bedside table near his empty teacup, then thought better of it and slid half of it into the door casing at what he hoped was her eye level. He thought about kissing her cheek or forehead, but he didn’t want to wake her; so much had happened since they last spoke, it would take too long for them to get things into some kind of even understanding before he could leave. He walked back down the carpeted hall, pressed his ear to the bathroom door, and heard one of them snoring, a light nasal snore that left him feeling he might pull off leaving after all.

  He stuck his pistol down the front of his pants, covered it with his shirt, and left the house for the darkness outside. He urinated in the woods across the street. A fog hovered among the black trees, and the sky already was beginning to lighten. He put his car in neutral, left his door open, and pushed until the Toyota was off the soft shoulder and the hill started to take it and he hopped in and coasted silently down toward the sea.

  Now the sun was bright off the chain-link fence around the motor pool, and Lester glanced at his watch. Five more minutes and he’d go in. And he was going to have to tell the truth. If he lied he would force Alvarez to call or even visit the Iranian for a follow-up interview. He imagined the Behrani family awake now, having to urinate in each other’s presence, the mother too, a woman from a culture that demanded women cover themselves from face to foot. He pictured the colonel knocking on the door, prepared to do what he must. If Kathy was still asleep and no one answered, would he assume Lester was too and then tell his family they would all have to wait a bit longer? Or would he hear the silence and think the house was empty and begin making noise?

  There had to be a better way to proceed, but right now Lester didn’t know what it was, only that there was quite a bit he hadn’t done as well as he could. He thought about Bethany and Nate, how sometime today he was going to have to get them alone for a talk. Maybe early tonight he’d take them out for hamburgers and chocolate shakes at a fast-food shack on the beach somewhere. He imagined Kathy with them too but then he let that one go; his daughter and son wouldn’t be ready for that for a while, and the truth was he wasn’t quite ready for it either. With any luck, Kathy would be moving back into her place at dusk anyway, and he thought of Bethany one sundown when she was four and they were all at the beach. Carol was nursing Nate, and Bethany sat next to him in the sand, her Star Wars towel around her shoulders. She turned to him and asked where the new suns come from.

  “The new suns? What do you mean, sweetie?”

  “The new one that comes out every morning, Daddy.”

  “Honey, there’s just one sun.”

  “No, ’cause look, Daddy, the ocean’s putting that one out. See? It’s getting all wet. They all do, Daddy. Didn’t you know that?”

  He’d laughed and pulled her onto his lap, hugged her to him, and kissed her wet sandy hair until his lips started to feel numb.

  A truck horn sounded in the traffic out on Broadway, and Lester got out of the Toyota and locked it. His pistol was under the passenger seat and he wished he’d taken his holster from Kathy’s Bonneville at dawn. He thought about how she might feel when she woke. Would the pills and his gun become something from a faraway drunkenness she wouldn’t even need to think about anymore?

  He walked across the sunlit lot for the shaded doors at the back of the Hall of Justice, and he had to squint in the light, his head aching slightly at the eyebrows, his legs two long sandbags underneath him. His mouth was dry and he planned on getting a cold Coke from the machines around the corner from the elevators. He took a deep breath and told himself just to speak the truth about Monday night—not a word about last night—but admit everything about Monday. His jacket was positively trouble-free; Alvarez might even let it all go with an oral reprimand.

  “Hey, Les.”

  It came from behind him, but Lester stepped into the shade of the building before he turned around. It was Doug, hopping out of his patrol car, leaving the engine running. His uniform was stretched tight at the shoulders and across the chest, and his forearms looked, as always, impossibly thick. He was chewing gum, something he always did on patrol, never any other time. He’d gotten a haircut, his brown hair shorter than Alvarez’s, and Lester could see his scalp glisten in the sunlight just before Doug stepped up into the shade, saying, “I thought you were off.”

  “Left a book in my locker. Why aren’t you out on patrol?”

  Doug shook his head, said he had to clean up two arrest reports from yesterday. He looked straight into Lester’s face and began to chew his gum with his mouth closed, as if chewing gum was a slightly indecent thing to be doing, under the circumstances.

  “Barbara went over to see Carol last night. She stayed pretty late.”

  “Yeah?” Lester thought he knew where this was going, and he didn’t like it. He also wanted to hurry inside, get his appointment over with, and get back on the freeway heading north.

  “Carol wanted us both to come over, but, tell you the truth, Les, I didn’t feel like hearing you get shitcanned all night. You look like crap, by the way. Sleep at the camp last night?”

  “We’re there for now.” Lester looked away and over the chain-link fence to the old courthouse on the other side of the street. Its huge stained-glass dome looked cool and composed under the sun.

  “We still, huh?”

  “That’s right, Doug.”

  “Listen, I know we’ve already done this little dance, but are you real clear on what you’re doing?”

  Real clear. Doug used that kind of language all the time, a vestige of all the inner healing weekend workshops he took with Barbara. Doug put his hand on Lester’s shoulder, a warm calloused paw. “’Cause you know you’
re throwing it all away, right, man? All those years between you two, you’re trashing them. You do know that.”

  Lester took in Doug’s face, his friend’s forehead all ridged with concern, his eyes blue and bright and earnest as he’d ever seen them. But naive too. It’s what Lester had always liked and disliked about him. “I don’t look at it that way.” Lester turned to open one of the doors, letting Doug’s hand fall away. He could feel the echo of his heart in his veins, and he was thirstier than ever. “I appreciate you looking out for me, Doug, but tell you what: you go patrol your territory and I’ll patrol mine, okay, man?”

  Lester turned and walked into the air-conditioned Hall of Justice. Three lawyers in dark suits stood at the elevators with their briefcases and paperwork. He glanced at his watch and decided to skip the Coke. Maybe Alvarez would offer him coffee, or water. He stood and waited, his hands crossed in front of him, his eyes on the polished brass elevator doors. He could see his reflection there, taller than the lawyers, but divided by the center line where the doors met. Then the tone sounded, the doors began to part, and as Lester moved forward he watched his own image spread out from the middle then disappear.

  THERE WAS JUST WHAT WAS IN FRONT OF ME, THINGS I KNEW BUT didn’t: an empty chair facing the side of my bed; an open door with a brass-plated knob, the knob of all the doors of all the rooms I’d ever lived in; lamplight across the blanket that covered me completely, even my arms—it looked like wool, as brown and purple as eggplant, and I was too warm under it, but I didn’t move.

  My throat was dry and sore, and my face and head felt flat, part of the pillow underneath. I was sweating. I could taste the salt in my throat, and I was waiting for my mother to walk through the doorway to get me up for the busride to school. But this is where I lay and sometimes watched Nick walk in from the bathroom. He’d come back naked or wrapped in a towel, his love handles hidden beneath the terry cloth, then he’d dress quietly in front of the closet so he wouldn’t wake me, stepping into his underwear, tucking his bobbing penis under the waistband, pulling on his suit pants and leaving them unbuttoned and unzipped until he found the right shirt. I’d sit up and light a cigarette, smoke it and watch him put on the costume he couldn’t wait to shed each night when he came home to eat too much, then smoke too much while he played bass in his practice room till I made him come watch TV with me, or make love.