by J. S. Margot
I knew all about teenage pig-headedness. I knew that sometimes there was no way out. That you couldn’t back down. That you sometimes even had to kick things up a notch. Because to back down was to surrender.
One night when I was young I came back from a party an hour later than agreed. My mother opened the front door: “You’re an hour late. You can’t come in any more.” She shut the door behind her. Then locked it. All the lights in the house went out. Half an hour later, one of them came on again. She unlocked the front door but didn’t open it—I’d have to do that. But I didn’t. I stayed where I was, standing on the drive. When she didn’t hear me come in, she came to look.
“You said I wasn’t allowed to come in any more. So I won’t.” “Come in.” “No, I’ll do as you said. An hour ago I wasn’t allowed in. So I’m obeying you.” “Come in, I say.” A curtain was pushed aside in one of the flats opposite. It was one of our neighbours in her nightie, eager to know what all the commotion was about. “Come in at once!” my mother said. “What will people think?” I didn’t come in. I spent the night in the wheelbarrow in the garden shed. The next morning my father found dozens of inexpertly rolled cigarette butts underneath it, and stopped my pocket money.
Elzira was always calm, never bad-tempered, during these fits of obstinacy. Eventually I learnt to ignore them. I would read aloud from her textbooks. Or from any book I had with me—whether prose, poetry or an academic work. I would analyse newspaper articles or tell her about my life. Often she would start writing poetry during these introverted moods, scribbling a few pages full of words and phrases that she then rearranged in a kind of collage. I gave her tips. I tried to get her to look at words and things from different perspectives.
There were also evenings when I would just sit down next to her and study, or silently read a book.
“Are you coming back tomorrow?” she would ask after a while, and her voice always seemed to startle her, as if she was surprised that a sound was coming out of her mouth.
Twenty-Four
Would I come to Mr and Mrs Schneider’s room?
Yes, of course. At first I was excited that they’d summoned me. Maybe I was getting a raise! But in the lift, whose mirror was stickered with sweet Post-its from Mrs Schneider to her children—snacks dans le frigo, pappie et mammie vous aiment (snacks in the fridge, Mummy and Daddy love you)—doubts began to creep in.
Had they decided to dispense with my services? Had I crossed a line, asking about Mr Schneider’s childhood? Had I been wrong to encourage Elzira to write poetry? But it was so impressive, the way she sampled her complex feelings and observations in at least five languages—French, Dutch, Antwerp dialect, ancient and modern Hebrew—to create her very own modern verse. Was I wrong to have introduced her to the work of Andreas Burnier and Judith Herzberg, even though they were both Dutch Jewish women poets?
The third floor, which I’d never been to before, turned out to be a suite of rooms entirely furnished in yellow. The satiny, pale-yellow carpet felt like warm snow; here and there lay gold-coloured, hand-knotted rugs that might have been Persian or Armenian. The textured wallpaper featured yellow flamingos on a grey-black background. The sofas, made of carved, gilded wood and upholstered in ochre-coloured fabric, were in the style of Louis XIV, or maybe XV or XVI—what did I know?
As always, Mr Schneider wore a dark suit and white shirt. He did what most men do as soon as they come home from work: he loosened his tie.
“Come in, take a seat,” he said, still fiddling with his tie. He led me to the second room, the walls lined with bookcases, where Mrs Schneider, whose elegant simplicity stood out even more in this baroque interior, turned out to be sitting in an armchair, waiting for me.
As soon as I sat down opposite her, I wondered whether I should have taken off my shoes, which looked scruffy and unpolished in this gleaming interior, rather than just wiping them on the front doormat. Was that it, I suddenly wondered? Was I going to be ticked off for wearing tight trousers and high heels?
Mr Schneider went and stood behind his wife, resting his hands on her shoulders. Posing as if for an aristocratic double portrait. Light fell into the room in shards through the blinds.
He said: “We need to talk about Jakov.”
This opening statement took me completely unawares.
Mrs Schneider nodded; I felt her glance sweep over me.
“As you know, some time ago Jakov went to Amsterdam with his class,” Mr Schneider continued.
Panic seized me; this had to be about our essay. It had earned Jakov, lazy but gifted, the highest score in his class. His Dutch teacher had even asked him to read it aloud and then devoted an entire lesson to it.
Anyone who knew Jakov, even slightly, would know he couldn’t possibly have written something like that by himself. But why were they only raising this now? At least three months had passed since we’d written about Jewish self-consciousness and how it seemed to have warped. After that, I’d tutored Jakov on a number of occasions: had summarized certain lessons, helped him with a presentation on a book by Orwell. We’d analysed and discussed Hector Malot’s novel Sans Famille, brilliantly translated as Alone in the World. Had I somehow, without realizing it, stepped on some toes?
“Jakov and two friends dropped out of the guided tour of the Anne Frank House halfway through, without their teachers noticing. The three boys then explored Amsterdam. And bought condoms.”
Mr Schneider gave a short, hearty laugh. He was attractive when he laughed at something other than his own jokes. I grinned too, more from nervousness and relief than anything else. Mrs Schneider couldn’t suppress a smile either: her mouth curled delicately at the corners, making her look even more aristocratic. Mr and Mrs Schneider were as different as chalk and cheese, but in many respects they seemed well matched. I didn’t doubt that their marriage was a happy one.
“We’re relieved to know our youngest son has a healthy interest in the opposite sex,” Mr Schneider went on, giving his wife’s shoulders a visible squeeze. “But we’re not exactly over the moon about his scheme to get rich by selling Durex at a massive markup in the yeshiva.”
Once again he laughed. Mrs Schneider looked up at him from her chair, silently amused. Seeing their merriment, I wondered how they could be so sure the condoms were bought with the opposite sex in mind. Antwerp’s Stadspark, a well-known gay cruising area, was in the Jewish neighbourhood, wasn’t it? When they strolled there on Shabbat, didn’t they see all the used condoms in the shrubbery?
For the first time I pictured a youthful Mr Schneider, and tried to imagine what Jakov would look like in a few years’ time.
Like other religious Jews, father and son tended to dress the same. They had the same overly long limbs. They even walked the same way—I hadn’t noticed it before—each step seeming to start with the tips of their shoes. It was as if they couldn’t plant their feet down without having first traced a route with their toes. When they laughed, they blossomed in the same way and radiated the same energy. Jakov’s ambition—so painfully obvious—would go the same way as his spots, I felt. It was just a question of waiting for it to burst, for the breakthrough.
“You mustn’t think that Jakov and his comrades actually used those condoms,” Mr Schneider said, interrupting my thoughts. “Boys buy condoms to look cool. And when they’re alone, to try out how they work.”
I nodded.
“What do you want of me?” I asked. “What’s this got to do with me?”
“What my spouse and I would like to know is this: has anything about Jakov struck you in recent months?”
“No,” I answered honestly.
“Are you sure?”
“Why?” I asked, shocked and wary.
“We’ve been comparing your hourly schedules for the last months. We’ve got them here. Take a look yourself.”
They showed me
the exercise book that circulated in their house, in which I noted down the hours I spent per day per child: mostly with Jakov and Elzira, only very rarely with Simon and Sara. Next to that figure I described in keywords what we’d spent our time doing: Dutch, geography, revision, homework, preparation. There were no limits to my working hours. I could come as often and as long as the children deemed necessary. On Sundays, the day the Schneiders called Day One, I was paid as agreed. My fee was calculated per hour—or quarter hour, if the times didn’t work out exactly. If they didn’t have quite enough small change and I said “don’t worry about it”, they would shush me. The next day the outstanding amount was lying there on the table, right down to the last franc: “Fair’s fair.”
“I’ve no idea what you can conclude from my work schedule,” I said, “except that we don’t waste any time.”
“A few days after Jakov’s trip to Amsterdam, you started working with him. Since then, you and he have joint sessions every week, whereas before, he never requested your help.”
“What are you insinuating?” I asked. I felt insulted.
“Were you aware of this little business? Those condoms—are they anything to do with you?”
Twenty-Five
Nima didn’t dare tell his parents how things were with Marjane. He couldn’t possibly let them know the state their daughter was in. He felt guilty; he’d failed as a brother. What had he been thinking, he reproached himself, assuming his sister could manage entirely on her own? That as long as he didn’t hear anything from her, she was all right?
During those days and weeks I often found him in fits of tears, kneeling, sobbing, throwing his arms in the air.
He couldn’t sleep any more. He ate hardly at all, but on the rare occasions he did sit down for a meal, he stuffed himself until he felt sick. He rang all his friends and acquaintances, mostly Iranians. In turn, all these people rang other people. A couple of times, his mother rang him.
He lied to her that she shouldn’t worry about Marjane, that she was too busy with her work and evening courses to have time for friends and family, that all the delicacies from Tehran made her happy, that her telephone number had only been cut off because she didn’t want to be disturbed, her girlfriends were forever calling her to chat, but she’d soon have a new phone number, a secret one, she’d already applied for it, secret numbers weren’t just dished out like that, though, so she was in the middle of the process, but they mustn’t let that upset them, they’d soon be able to ring their daughter again, it was just a question of time.
While Marjane was staying with us, Nima got into a fight with a guy outside De Volle Maan, a cafe in the centre of Antwerp. He’d been offensive, told Nima to fuck off back to his own country. The next place I saw my boyfriend was at the A & E department of Sint-Elisabethgasthuis, where they were sewing up a gash next to his eye that needed twelve stitches. We were told his face might turn all the colours of the rainbow over the next two weeks, a prediction that came true. In this same period he lost his identity papers, bank card and residence permit. He picked fights at work, too, even though he’d had this temporary job at a screen printing shop for months and really enjoyed it.
One Monday, Nima resolved to ring his parents later that week, to tell them exactly what was going on.
But the very next evening, his mother herself called, in a terrible state. Of all the telephone calls that had been made about Marjane, some had been made to Tehran.
Nima’s parents had rung a couple of doctors in Brussels who’d examined Marjane. They knew more about her and her condition than we did.
In the three years she’d been in Belgium, his sister hadn’t made a single friend. Contrary to what she’d told her parents and brother, it turned out that Marjane—who’d had a successful career as a secretary in Tehran and who’d rejected one marriage suitor after the other—had never found work in this new country. She’d got no further with her evening course in French than registering for it. She’d been living off benefits for a while, but hadn’t cashed a cheque in months. As far as we could tell, no one from the social services had tried to contact her.
About four months after we’d found Marjane in her fusty basement, her parents paid for her to fly back home, armed with a medical certificate saying she needed urgent psychological care. This proof of mental incapacity meant she could be admitted to Iran. As soon as his sister was safely under his parents’ guardianship Nima regained some of his equanimity. But he was never the same man again.
Twenty-Six
When Nima and I had been together for three years, we gave a party.
We did so in the summery green of a friend’s garden, which bordered on a field overrun with buttercups, nettles and sorrel. At the end of the garden there was a large, ancient greenhouse, in which tomatoes hung heavy and ripe. Its windows were whitewashed; if you looked closely, you were supposed to be able to tell from the glass that it dated from before the war, but however closely I looked, I wasn’t able to.
We sat—somewhere in Tehran there’s a video of this—at wooden tables that we had placed end to end. The maize crop in the adjoining field was half grown. White cloths covered the tables, absorbing the bright sunlight.
There were about twenty-five guests: a mix of Nima’s pals, friends I’d made at school and university, and some of my relatives. About half the guests were Flemish or Dutch. The rest came from all over, but mainly from the Middle East: Iran, Azerbaijan, Kurdistan.
Nima’s chess-playing friend Khosrov was there too. Whenever we saw him, he was on his own; he never brought a friend. His sexual preference was never mentioned. He and Nima didn’t joke about it. Not even about the irony of their fate.
The two had met at the Immigration Office in Brussels, where Nima regularly worked as an interpreter at hearings that, in the best-case scenario, led to a residence permit. After a couple of stints there he knew what refugees should and shouldn’t say to increase their chances of asylum. “No one, no one at all, leaves their country for ever just on a whim. Every migration is an amputation. That alone causes enough pain.” He knew where you could get hold of fake IDs or driving licences, and how much they cost, but usually it wasn’t necessary to go to such lengths. Sometimes Nima didn’t translate what asylum seekers said, but made up stories and traumas he felt would go down well with the officials.
One of his most successful tactics was to present young Iranians or Azerbaijanis as homosexuals who risked the death penalty in their own countries. Such applications were usually approved. But despite having secured the coveted residence permit, these men were very angry when they found out how Nima had done it: there was no greater insult than being called a homo. During his time as an interpreter, Nima had painted Khosrov, too, as a gay man whose life was threatened. Without knowing that his lie was in fact the truth.
Well away from the tables two charcoal fires blazed, tended by willing helpers, on which aubergines, onions, pumpkin and bell peppers were charring, along with lamb and chicken. Bowls and platters were set out on folding tables, full of vegetable and fruit salads: tabbouleh, watermelon with pistachio and goat’s cheese, grapes with fennel, carrots with cumin—the last of these a recipe copied from Mrs Schneider.
Nima had started his engineering course; I was in my last year at the Institute of Interpreting and Translation Studies. We just had enough money to pay our bills.
For that reason, and because we liked cooking anyway, we’d made most of the dishes ourselves, with ingredients from the garden and products bought cheaply from market stalls at the end of the day. Wine was tapped from cardboard boxes. Beer and fruit juice flowed freely. Nima didn’t drink alcohol, nor did some of his friends.
A few guests had brought desserts—from Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East. The Caspian Sea caviar had been provided, as always, by Nima’s parents, and was served with potato and a dollop of sour cream.
T
he story about the missing rib hooking up with the missing body was something Nima and I didn’t believe. But we did believe with holy fervour that together we could take on the whole world, the future, and even eternity. The fact that our friends shared this conviction gave our love and togetherness an extra dimension.
The only “formal” element of the party consisted of the speech, ardently declaimed by an eloquent friend. Another friend simultaneously interpreted her words into English. A third guest tried to convey them in Persian.
I was allowed to be the icing on the cake.
Our friend Behrouz had written out a Persian love poem by the fourteenth-century bard Hafez. It was in Persian, but he’d done it phonetically, so I could recite it. Which I now did. I’d practised my pronunciation long and thoroughly, and it had paid off. It sounded as if I really spoke that language, with its melodic cadences.
While I was still reciting, part of my mind was asking itself how, in the long term, Nima and I would cope without a common native language. I couldn’t repress these thoughts. It was as if my recitation had brought them to life. Would we, when it came down to it, be able to comfort each other or make each other laugh with the right words? Didn’t a native language constitute a secret society to which an outsider would never be admitted?
We partied until deep into the night, under an unusually clear sky full of stars. We ate and drank, danced and sang, told stories and listened, laughed and cried, planned and dreamt. I felt wrapped in a blanket of affection.
Until the moment when a friend slung his arm around my neck and slurred: “Have I told you yet what I really think? Those foreigners pinch everything from us. Even our women!”
