The Parisian

by Isabella Hammad

  “That sounds interesting,” said Nolin. “Invisible causes as a sign of pathology. But it could be sophistical. Let me think.”

  Midhat was flattered by Nolin’s tone, though he knew he had spoken with the accidental definiteness of a person using a second language. He looked at Jeannette, hoping to be admired. Instead he saw a pair of outraged eyes.

  “Wait a minute,” said Nolin. “Are you saying that madness is a discrete invisible cause? Or that it has one? I mean, are you calling madness an aberration, or is it the cause of aberrant symptoms? For one thing, it’s often not particularly invisible, and for another, it is most often extremely difficult to ascertain causes. Unless you are of the modern camp. Other than neurological, you know.”

  “I think I meant to say that madness was a cause. But I suppose it’s not so invisible, no …”

  “Yes, it’s a little vague. In the end,” Patrice Nolin addressed the table, “one must ask of a speculative paradigm first and foremost whether or not it is of use when we are going about our daily business of trying to understand phenomena. I admire your originality Monsieur Midhat but your thinking is caught in a kind of tautology … or system of infinite regress.”

  “Thank you, Patrice, for that lesson,” said Frédéric, with a jolly smile.

  The damage was done. Midhat wished he had not spoken.

  “I think,” said Sylvain, after a pause, “the Muhammadan speaks very good French, however.”

  “Sylvain,” said Jeannette, harshly.

  “Jeannette,” said her father.

  “Are we all going to say each other’s names?” said Carole.

  “Carole,” ventured Marie-Thérèse, but nobody smiled, and she blushed a painful shade of red that leaked onto her forehead and nose.

  “In addition to which,” said Nolin, “I can’t believe your world is so perfectly consistent with itself, Monsieur Midhat, pardon me. There are several things I can name right now as serious aberrations in this world, behavioural or otherwise, and we know exactly what the causes are.”

  “I am sorry,” said Midhat, enunciating with some force.

  “That’s enough Nolin,” said Sylvain.

  Midhat looked at his unlikely defender, and remembered in a flash that it was at the party—that was where Sylvain had upset Jeannette, and he, Midhat, had followed her into the hall.

  “Pardon me,” said Nolin in a haughty voice, though it was followed swiftly by an earnest “Ah,” as Georgine took his plate. “Thank you.”

  Georgine squeaked the trolley around the table.

  “Why don’t you sit with us for dessert?” said Molineu.

  Georgine hesitated a fraction too long. Already Molineu was suggesting that Jeannette might shuffle down towards Patrice, and slip a chair in there, three on each side is perfect, first perhaps bring in the soufflé and dessert spoons, if you might Georgine. Midhat caught a raised eyebrow from Jeannette to Carole. Not out of unkindness towards Georgine, he understood, nor out of disrespect for her father; it was just a necessary concession that something was out of the ordinary, to avert gossip that the Molineus always dined with their servants. Molineu’s face was quickly showing signs of embarrassment as his whimsy took effect. Georgine seated herself between Jeannette and Sylvain and whispered, “Good evening.”

  Midhat looked at Sylvain and Georgine right-angled on the corner of the table. Her head was bowed, and he was swigging from his glass. The embrace Midhat had stumbled on at the party presented itself vaporously to his mind. He watched them in amazement, side by side, ignoring each other. For the first time it occurred to him to question whether Georgine had been willing. He felt a wave of confused disgust.

  “Yes, that’s better. Isn’t it.” Docteur Molineu pushed his spoon into the soufflé.

  Midhat returned his attention to Jeannette, who was staring at her bowl. He was always watching her distress from afar, across a room, a garden; he blinked as the image recurred of water falling off her thighs. The anger he felt on the terrace was already cooling, deposed by her apparently worthier annoyance at his mention of madness. That hardly seemed much of an indiscretion, especially given that the speech in its entirety had drawn enough embarrassing attention to himself that no one would be thinking of her mother. All the same, he had forfeited his high ground. Was it a game of one-upmanship, of who could be more annoyed with whom? At least, if it was, then she could not be indifferent to him. At this thought he was surprised to feel a hot little glow of hope.

  “I think we ought to change the subject,” said Nolin.

  “Which subject?” said Marie-Thérèse.

  “Somebody pass Georgine a spoon,” said Molineu.

  “Thank you.”

  “And how are your studies, Monsieur Midhat?” said Carole.

  “My studies are fine, thank you Mademoiselle. I am now beginning the preparations for my final examinations before the summer break. And then in the winter term I will be starting to perform my own dissections on cadavers. In the summer term it will be histology, physiology, and biological physics.”

  “How nice. It sounds challenging.”

  “We received … or rather, Jeannette …” He glanced across and saw with relief that her expression had softened. “A letter came from Laurent.” She nodded her permission. “It seems he has been putting his learning into practice already.”

  “Good luck to him,” said Sylvain.

  “He’ll be on leave soon,” said Molineu.

  Nolin said, “What is the news from the Front?”

  “Oh, please let’s not talk anymore about the war,” said Jeannette.

  “Yes,” said Sylvain. “Let’s—let’s talk about cinema, or literature or something. Has anyone seen The Heroes of Yser?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” said Nolin. “You think talking about cinema is not talking about the war? What do you think the subject is of The Heroes of Yser?”

  “Oh, shut up,” said Sylvain.

  “High culture has become totally sterile.”

  “Patrice.”

  “We are actually talking about the cinema. There is nothing left to discuss. Which leads us to the more interesting point that leisure is the grounds for innovation, and that in a state of war …”

  “I think we are surfeited with this line now, Patrice,” said Molineu.

  Nolin closed his mouth and quivered a frown. What a bore he was, thought Midhat. He noticed the wine was gone from the bottles and their glasses, and wondered if they had all slipped into extreme versions of themselves.

  “Have we finished?” said Molineu.

  Jeannette had barely touched her dessert; Sylvain’s bowl was empty; the Nolin sisters had made admirable dents. Midhat did not particularly like the soufflé, it tasted too much of egg, but it was sweet and he liked sweet things, and accordingly had eaten half of it. Georgine’s bowl was wiped clean, and at her employer’s question she jumped to her feet and scraped herself free of the chair. Setting off with the squeaking trolley again around the table, she disappeared into the kitchen with the plates.

  “Coffee, anyone?” said Molineu.

  “I think we have surfeited,” said Patrice Nolin, with a quick smile.

  He bowed his head at his daughters, who stood and cooed: the food was delicious, such a treat, really, in these dark days. Sylvain patted his chest, he couldn’t fit in a drop more. They gathered their coats in the hall, and shook hands and kissed goodbye.

  In the silence after their departure, Molineu said something about coffee and returned to the dining room. Jeannette hesitated in the hall, and Midhat felt the breath of something resuming. She walked to the door of the cream salon, and turned the key. When he saw she had left the door ajar, he followed.

  She was sitting on the piano stool, which was covered in a sheet of canvas, like everything else in the room. The covered piano extended vast and glacier-like before her. There was a strong smell of varnish. He hung in the doorway.

  “I understand,” he said.
/>   She looked up at him wearily. He wondered if she would disavow their previous exchange and pretend she didn’t follow.

  “Did you drink wine tonight?”

  “No,” he replied, with a sharply falling intonation, as if that were a ludicrous suggestion. Then he stepped forward and lowered his voice. “I wanted to say again that I am sorry. Please accept my apology. I understand you are angry. And that I should not have talked with Laurent about you. And that I should not have presumed …”

  She faced him. She was painfully beautiful in the yellow dress. Her skin was like soft paper, those blue veins. He could tell by her eyes that she was experiencing some kind of emotion, but he hesitated to name it, so often was he getting things wrong.

  “I am not jealous of Laurent. But you know I—I did mean what I said.” He swallowed. “And I’m sorry if you do not—if you do not feel the same, I will not … But, I miss you, Jeannette. Really.” He reached out for the nearest covered piece of furniture, wanting to sit and meet her level; but whatever he had gripped wobbled and he let it go. “I miss talking to you. It meant so much to me, walking with you, and without it, I can’t say what it is, but I lack … Really, I—I loved … And I want to help you to find out what happened to your mother. I will do anything I can.”

  Jeannette’s eyebrows rose, though she did not actually look surprised. “My mother. That is kind of you, but there is nothing to be done. As I think I told you I don’t think it’s healthy for me …”

  “But as long as you know that—that I am listening.”

  Here, at last, she smiled. He had said the right thing.

  “There is a line in The Three Musketeers …”

  “Oh no, don’t quote The Three Musketeers!” She laughed, leaning back. “You know, you shouldn’t feel you have to rely on what other people have said all the time.” Her eyes rested on him for a moment, then she twisted and tucked her feet under the piano. “I’ll tell you. When I was studying at the university, I was always surrounded by these young men being knowledgeable.” She laughed again, a chain of exhalations. “And it was intimidating. I felt I was less than they were. They were men after all—and who was I?” Her fingers traced where the lid of the piano was hidden beneath its dress. She lifted the lid. The fabric caught on the back of it, like the skin of an eyelid. “I used to come home from the library and go through all my work with Papa. Then I found myself parroting him in my seminars, and I would say exactly what he had told me the night before. And then, after a while, I realised I didn’t need to. It was just language these men were playing with. I would listen very carefully to the arguments they made, the way they discussed things outside class. Leaning on this philosopher and that, adding clause after clause, and I realised it was just language, not life. They knew nothing about life, and this was everything to them, and it was small. And thinking that suddenly liberated me, and I was no longer afraid to speak up. And my speaking became better.” With her forefinger, she marked the cracks between the keys under the canvas, making indentations that disappeared as she moved from one to the next. “I could have disparaged them in my mind and made it easier for myself that way. I could have called them petty young men or something. But I didn’t, because what would have been the point?” She had outlined five keys, now six, her hand moving across the front of her body. “I’m trying to tell you that you shouldn’t think you have to be intimidated by things on the surface, like conversation.”

  “I’m not intimidated.”

  “Well, I’m just saying. You are not beneath them in any way. You may be much younger, but you have for one thing far more goodness than Patrice Nolin.”

  She pressed a key. The sound was manifold and deep, glassy and warm at the same time. She gazed up at him as if she had voiced a dare. The challenge was so direct he should have felt embarrassed. He didn’t: he felt amazed. He felt an exhilarating exposure, the stinging relief of salt air.

  “I think I am in love with you,” he said. His mouth was dry. “I also think you are quite unreasonable.”

  She remained looking up at him, until they heard the grate of a floorboard.

  “Ah, pardon me,” said Georgine, closing the door again.

  The interruption solidified the moment. Jeannette whispered that she should go to bed, and moved past. Midhat waited alone for a few more minutes amid the covered furniture, hearing the rain mutter on the window.

  In the kitchen, Georgine was drying a stack of wet plates.

  “I hope you enjoyed the dessert tonight,” said Midhat, opening a cabinet.

  “I did Monsieur, thank you. I hope you did too.”

  “Georgine, if it’s not impolite of me to ask …”

  “Yes, Monsieur?”

  He selected a glass and hesitated.

  “I was wondering. Could you tell me, why is Docteur Molineu a friend of Monsieur Sylvain Leclair? It is only—because they are not neighbours, I was wondering …”

  “Monsieur Leclair was a good friend of Madame Molineu,” said Georgine. “Who died.”

  She looked so serene, wiping her hands on the towel at her waist. He thought of Sylvain Leclair, and his heavy, impassive insults. Nolin was a pedant, but Leclair was nasty. Midhat turned the faucet on to fill the glass, and as the water rushed, his imagination began to whirr.

  8

  He did not sleep easily that night. He consulted an alarm clock he had borrowed from the Docteur so frequently that he barely saw the hands change their angles, but instead felt he was moving with them, pushing into the night in one continuous movement. Fatigue won out around four thirty, and he woke after a few more hours to find the room flushed with sunlight. Seconds later, the clock burst out singing.

  Jeannette entered for breakfast after he did and delivered a general good morning. The tablecloth shone in the light between them and the steam twisted from the coffeepot. Docteur Molineu began to read aloud from the broadsheet.

  “Fifteen hours. Bad weather continues, no event on the Front during the night … to the east of the Yser, two attempted attacks by the enemy stopped by our gunfire. And the Dardanelles …” He crackled over two pages. “Brigadier General Cox pushes an attack … serious loss of the enemy … good. Considerable progress … German general killed … Australian submarine lost in the Straits.”

  Folding the paper Molineu noticed a blob of jam on the tablecloth and reached for his butter knife. The blob slid easily onto the blade but as he tipped the knife upwards it stretched and crept over the other side, falling off in three red drips.

  “Jojo, pass me your napkin.”

  Jeannette was replacing her letters in their envelopes, and still she had not looked at Midhat. He watched her brazenly: it was not possible that she would treat this the same as other mornings. He would not miss the moment she turned her eyes to his.

  “Thank you,” said Molineu, enclosing the mess under the napkin. “Did Marian write?”

  “Yes, she wrote.”

  “She is well?”

  “Yes, she is well.”

  And still she would not turn to him. She was sealed; she made not a single unnecessary movement. Her arm reached for the coffee cup, her head remained immobile as she moved her eyes.

  Her hair had grown, he realised. When he first arrived, there had been little to pin up, and the rough curls had bloomed out of the back of her head, cutting away to her thin neck. It could not have been any shorter yesterday but it was only now he noticed, perhaps because she had arranged it in a new style: with a parting on one side and a series of large coils wound and fastened on either side of her head. The sunlight throbbed over her hairline. Breakfast over, they stood to part. Jeannette was nearest the door and left the room before him as usual.

  Since the blunder over Laurent, when Jeannette started avoiding him, Midhat had used the mornings to study for his examinations. Most days he remained in his bedroom until lunchtime, combing through his books subject by subject, recording any concept he had trouble with, and compiling a list of queries th
at he carried despondently to the afternoon class. Today the prospect of this routine was a particular strain. He dragged himself upstairs. The physics textbook already lay open on his desk. Was it possible, had he misread the look she gave him from the piano stool? As the rods of the chair hit his back he felt a thrash of anger that she should be so cruel, so intent on making him suffer.

  The first section of the chapter “Motion, Velocity, Acceleration” was titled: “The Motion of a Train.” He read it through, then realised he had not absorbed anything. Had it been shock, that look she gave him, and he had taken it for love? It would not be the first time he had failed to understand her. Had she not smiled? Then again, a smile could mean several different things. He began to read aloud.

  “The Motion of a Train. Let us suppose that a locomotive stands with steam up … steam up … ready to make the run to the next station … the next station … When it starts, we notice that at first it moves slowly …”

  A soft knock at the bedroom door. “Good morning, Midhat,” came Jeannette’s voice.

  “Ah,” he said, up and turning the handle, “come in, come in,” his legs seemed to have no bones; he saw Jeannette’s face and her hair pinned, her hands holding a book, and his anger fell away, overcome by that Arab impulse to encourage strangers over thresholds. Jeannette looked taken aback. Yet, what else could she have expected, knocking on his door? She stepped inside and stood next to the prayer mat.

  “I wanted to show you something.”

  “Please, please.”

  He pulled out the chair for her, then sat on the bed and locked his hands as though they were in public. To calm himself, he breathed out slowly through narrowed lips.

  “I found this the other day when I was going through old photographs,” she said.

  She pulled two pieces of pale green paper from the book but did not hand them to him. He was delighted to realise she was trembling.

  “It is a doctor’s report.”

  “About your mother?”

  She looked him in the eyes. “They didn’t diagnose her with hysteria, it says here. But with ‘hystero-neurasthenia.’ Do you know what that is?”