Between Cups of Coffee

by Tajalli Keshavarz

  Her face was cold as I touched it with the back of my fingers. We had walked leisurely by the river after the movie. As we were going up the stairs to my flat she said:

  ‘Do you think we are taking things too seriously? Perhaps the film was real. Perhaps we have little time for comedy in our lives.’

  ‘There is always a danger of assuming things are rosy, and then as you smile, the catastrophe hits,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, but thinking like this, there is a real danger of missing the laughter for an imaginary catastrophe.’

  We were by the door of the flat. We stopped talking and as I took her in my arms, her shoulder was cold against my face. I thought, she feels the warmth of my face, and this gave me confidence. We didn’t talk much through the night.

  15

  I didn’t expect Carol to be in. She had a very thick blue jumper on and was curled on the sofa. Her hands were hidden under the stretched sleeves with her chin resting on her knees. ‘I am freezing,’ she said.

  ‘Didn’t expect you back tonight.’

  She didn’t answer. ‘Why did you turn the heating off? It’s freezing,’ she said.

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘I didn’t either. Somebody must have,’ she said.

  ‘So why didn’t you turn it on when you came in?’

  She didn’t say anything.

  ‘It seems it is not working. I don’t know what has happened. If you could stay in tomorrow, I…’

  ‘You don’t expect me to do your housekeeping for you do you?’ she said.

  ‘But you live here too you know.’

  ‘I said I will be leaving soon. I am looking for a flat, you know that.’

  ‘I have known it for a long time.’

  ‘You are so insensitive. You cannot see other people’s problems; you and your miserable little flat. Anyway I am leaving. I am going to Brazil.’

  ‘Good! So we have some commitment here.’

  She didn’t say anything.

  ‘So he proposed to take you with him, did he?’ I said. ‘He will, he will, you are more impatient than I am. I know you want to get rid of me, but it is a big commitment on his part.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  She was silent again.

  ‘Is it so big a commitment to agree to take someone to his own country? He is not delaying his return for you.’

  ‘It is not like that. Anyway you didn’t stop me from going.’

  ‘You decided to go, and you decided to come back.’

  ‘Exactly! What was I in your life? What am I in your life anyway?’ she said.

  ‘Now it is me! You come back and sulk in a corner, God knows why, and it is all my fault. Get a grip! We didn’t have a commitment. Now if you are disappointed with him, perhaps you had gone too far in your expectations,’ I said.

  I went close to her and she leaned her head against my thigh as I was standing next to the sofa. I sat next to her.

  ‘Have you eaten?’ I asked.

  ‘No!’

  ‘So you didn’t go out either.’

  ‘No. some of his Brazilian friends came and they were talking their language all the time. You know the lads. I didn’t stay.’

  ‘So what now?’

  ‘Can you make me an omelette?’ she said.

  There was only one egg left in the fridge. I took my coat and went out. It wasn’t raining but it was cold. There was a late closing supermarket near the flat. To get there, I had to pass by the bistro. It was even more crowded now. I wondered where Anita lived. I bought some eggs, milk and bread. When I came back, Carol was sound asleep in the bed.

  I put the eggs in the fridge. I thought that tomorrow I must remember to call someone to come and fix the boiler. The kitchen was cold. I heated up some milk and sat on the chair at the table facing the fridge. The milk was boiling. I poured it in a cold mug and wrapped my hands around it. Kate would have loved this I thought. I took out some office work from my briefcase leaning against the wall and started reading. The new project was to start; new faces to go with it. Three more people. I started the laptop and began typing in the advert. The whole thing would kick off by the beginning of the spring. This was one of the last things I talked about with Kate. She was jolly and I knew she was in for a discussion. I knew she would challenge me no matter what I said that afternoon. I couldn’t wait to tell her the news: ‘I’ve got the project,’ I said. ‘Are you happy?’ she said. It was obvious that she was looking for an argument and I fell for it!

  ‘Of course I am happy! What a question to ask me!’ I thought she was such a paranoid. She couldn’t accept anything without questioning it. I was sure she would argue with that too!

  ‘You think you are a scientist but are you really? All you do is to have what you call ‘research meetings’ and to fill supervisory logs; and the best you can do is to publish an article in this journal or that and show off.’

  ‘You are such a cynic.’

  She ignored me.

  ‘And what if your results do not match your speculated outcome? Oh! Then it is too bad! You repeat the experiment; you can’t accept that perhaps things are not that way oriented. You are prepared to say that you have failed to prove things rather than to accept that perhaps things are not rigid, the way you expect them to be.’

  ‘Now this is a flimsy argument.’

  ‘Ah! You see. This is where I say that science today is nothing but religion! You are the one who is right. If you are pressed, then you are reluctantly ready to accept that other, so-called, scientists are also right. But who am I, just a layman, to challenge the essence of your beliefs? My arguments are too soft, too shallow!’

  ‘But listen, I just wanted to break the good news...’

  ‘And I say I am happy for you! If anything, I am happy that you will create a job for a poor desperate graduate.’

  ‘I cannot win,’ I said.

  ‘You see? You don’t want to consider what I say as a possibility. You just look at it as an attack on your principles, dare I say lines from a holy book! Let me tell you. As far as I am concerned, at least those so-called scientists that I have seen are all tied up with their dubious ideas and they think those are the eternal laws, laws of nature! After all, wasn’t he, that man, one of your gurus who looked for a formula to define the whole world? You are all trying to prove God and you so proudly consider yourselves atheists! You are a bunch of employees with different tags.’

  She said all this with calm. She stopped in the middle of sentences but I didn’t interrupt her. I looked at her, at her lips, the way her eyes moved while she spoke. Then I said:

  ‘I didn’t know you had such a high opinion of me.’

  ‘Oh! Don’t create a special position for yourself! There are hundreds of people like you out there. Look at your small team, you all think the same, different coloured pencils but all pencils. You cannot think of a world outside the paper.’

  ‘Listen, I have to go back I have a meeting. Could we have dinner?’ I said eventually.

  ‘Yes of course, talk with you on the phone.’

  I came out and rushed to the research meeting. My team was waiting.

  16

  I put the mug on the table and sat there for few minutes. Then I brought out Kate’s diary from the bookshelf and started reading:

  Now I know that is it. The verdict is given, whether David brings in his usual strong arguments for or against it, the truth is looking me in the face; every minute with each breath it comes closer. It establishes itself more and more in my blood, my flesh, my mind. I will be gone, silently and calmly one of these days. And what will I miss? These moments of talking with him, these moments that have come so late and are fading away as I sit across the small table and look at him with all his passion and anguish about his research. Sometimes I think he is a wrong man in a wrong job in a wrong century. But the truth is looking at me and telling me it is me who is wrong, my existence which is rejecting itself and has to go. Obviously I am not for the future, for the near
future, not even for the next year perhaps.

  What a wishful person he is. I see all his naïveties and still I love our chats. Perhaps I get some sort of satisfaction when I see him and his naïve arguments even; what I am writing is showing my arrogance! But he is naïve! Him and his research! He wants to change the world by a new drug! He writes research proposals, he becomes excited about it all, goes through the ups and downs of getting the funding, and to get it he promises the world to the funding body with specific dates and ‘deliverables’. The sad thing is that in the course of the process, he convinces himself that he has the answer, that he can deliver all those fantasies in a miserable three-year period. And he tries to convince me too! Me, who is sitting across the table carrying the ‘truth’ listening to his argument about the promise of new drugs! He even wants to defeat ageing now! Oh, good. I do like to get old. I love the experience of getting old, I do want to walk slowly and look at the whole world with a different eye. But what is my right? I cannot get old, can I? I am one of the fortunate selected people who will have a short-cut. Yes I had imagined myself, sitting by the counter at the library in silent summer afternoons reading a book, I had imagined myself in the pauses between reading pages when you take your eyes off the page and look up but you are not looking at anything, I had imagined myself old with wrinkles, with hair gone grey, mousy hair gone grey and I had liked it. But sorry I don’t have time for it now, I have to let go. What will I miss? I will miss life, simple! But how could I miss it if I don’t exist any more? I am not there to feel sorry for not having those moments with him, not having the reading moments, not having the excitement of going for a walk talking about Socrates and Nietzsche and their differences.

  He says, ‘yes I am happy; I got the project eventually… what a question you ask! Of course I am happy.’

  ‘This is like a priest being happy by being offered a parish. Now you can go and start your sermon.’

  ‘Why are you so bitter? I am just sharing my success with you, that’s all.’

  ‘And I am happy for you! You cannot deny that the whole thing is a farce!’

  ‘Oh, come on. Obviously something is wrong. Let’s have a drink. Let’s celebrate.’

  We had a bottle between us and both were hungry. I looked at his face and liked the freshness of hope in a middle-aged man!

  ‘Let’s go home.’

  ‘What about food?’

  ‘That can wait,’ I said.

  It is just that his passion in discussions excites me. Yes, there is a naïvety but there is also a stream of energy that flows towards me and suddenly I don’t care. I don’t care about the truth! The coldness of mattress and the warmth of his skin after the wine and the afternoon sun outside was all that I wanted then and I had them all.

  17

  It was one of the last lectures of the semester.

  ‘Why do you bother?’ I said to myself. Some were talking, some were taking their notebooks out, and some were just looking. But there was no response to my question. I couldn’t be bothered continuing along that line. I was bored with my own sentences now. Did I still, after so many years of teaching, hope that what I said could make a change? Did I believe in miracles? How could I make any change in a university student old enough to run a business? I was giving lectures to a bunch of disillusioned, disinterested youth who didn’t even know why they were there. I wouldn’t have minded if they protested by not attending the lectures, by coming late trying deliberately to disrupt the lectures. But they weren’t late for the lecture to be rebellious, they just didn’t care. Was I wasting my time teaching them? Perhaps Kate was right. Whatever she said earlier about scientists and research could be valid for lecturers and teaching too! And what about other professions? Oh! That’s great. What a picture of our society, but then, isn’t it a negative way of looking at things? If she was right, then how come we had progress in science, effectively, on a daily basis?

  Then I thought how come I hadn’t noticed Kate’s comments being so negative while she was usually a positive person. Should I leave the whole thing? I didn’t need to keep the job to sustain myself so why was I standing there in front of the disenchanted gang? I was tired. I sat down and continued with my lecture. A student was sleeping in the corner and another was sending a text message on his mobile. Had I failed?

  I finished the lecture and went back home. I just didn’t feel like doing more work in the office. It was early afternoon. As I got out of the bus, I saw Anita coming out of the bistro with a young girl.

  ‘Already finished?’ I asked her. She looked tired.

  ‘Today I’ve had Hanna with me. It is the half-term. She helped me in the morning so I have the rest of the day off.’

  ‘Doing anything special?’

  ‘No. Not really. There isn’t much time left to go to a gallery or something.’

  ‘Do you like arts?’

  ‘I don’t mind going to galleries sometimes but Hanna paints and likes it.’

  I looked at Hanna. She was tall for her age. She looked serious.

  ‘Do you want to come up for a coffee? It will be different from the routine!’

  Anita blushed but there was no impression on Hanna’s face.

  ‘Thank you but we must go home.’

  ‘You can do with a cup. It is still too early.’

  ‘In that case…that would be nice, thanks.’

  We went up. As I went in, they stood by the door.

  ‘Come in, come in!’

  We went to the sitting-room.

  I don’t know why I invited her to my place. But they were in now. I asked: ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Yes please but actually, Hanna doesn’t drink coffee.’

  ‘Tea then?’

  ‘If it’s not too much trouble.’

  ‘Not at all, my pleasure to make tea for the young lady.’

  I came back with the drinks and some biscuits. We sat around the coffee table. Hanna was looking at her tea all the time. She had a very pale face, a narrow nose and small eyes. I could never have guessed they were mother and daughter.

  ‘So which painter do you like?’

  ‘I don’t know. All of them I guess.’ She spoke softly and with a very low voice as if she was whispering something. Anita said: ‘She has seen a couple of exhibitions recently; one of Picasso and one of Rembrandt.’

  ‘So, which one did you like better?’

  ‘Don’t know, both of them I guess.’

  I stood up and went to the window. It was windy outside. Anita said, ‘are you very busy at work?’

  ‘Oh, yes; but this is not something new.’

  ‘Yes. I am sure. I see you rushing to work sometimes.’

  ‘It’s because I love it so much,’ and I laughed.

  She said, ‘I know you love your work.’

  ‘But how do you know?’

  ‘I just know. When you are a waitress you understand many things.’

  ‘So what else you understand about me?’

  She didn’t say anything, but blushed. Then she said: ‘You like whisky.’

  I laughed: ‘And I know you are a very hospitable person.’

  ‘Do you really mean it?’

  ‘You are generous with your whisky.’

  ‘But that is work.’

  ‘It is not only the work. Is it?’

  She blushed again. ‘We really should go. It takes us some time to get home.’

  ‘Do you live far away?’

  She did. It would take her 1-1.5 hours to get home on a good day. I noticed that Hanna hadn’t finished her tea. Anita stood and started to take the cups to the kitchen.

  ‘Don’t worry about those. This is my territory!’

  She took the cups to the kitchen anyway.

  ‘Thanks very much. We really enjoyed your company.’

  ‘You should do this again.’

  She didn’t say anything. I looked out of the window. I saw them as they were walking to the bus stop. She had taken Hanna’s hand. They were walki
ng slowly but weren’t talking.

  I was walking home from school. My father was walking next to me. I had my school bag on my back.

  ‘Walk properly!’

  He used to take me home only some days of the week.

  ‘How was school today?’

  ‘Fine,’ I said.

  It would take an hour to get home. We used to walk for a few minutes, sometimes longer, to get to the car. Then he would drive away from the busy streets through the suburbs and then country lanes. He wouldn’t have the radio on. The air would change as he drove close to the countryside. He drove silently and I would look outside through the windscreen thinking about homework, my friends at school and next day’s classes. He would drive slower in the winter.

  The door opened and Carol came in.

  As she was coming in, she called me. Then she walked in to the room with a man.

  ‘This is Fernando.’

  Fernando was a well built tall man with a big face and big hands.

  ‘I told you about Fernando. He is going back to Brazil to take the main role in Carlos Dance Company. He is taking me with him.’ She squeezed Fernando’s arm as she was standing next to him.

  ‘That must be exciting for you, when are you leaving?’

  ‘We are going next week.’

  Fernando was silent but said:

  ‘I have spent enough time here.’

  ‘But you want to leave so soon,’ I said.

  ‘Oh yes, it is quite late if you ask me.’

  ‘But it should be exciting for you to go together,’ I told him.

  ‘Oh, no, Carol’s not going with me.’ Fernando said.