The Occasional Virgin

by Hanan al-Shaykh

  ‘Before I signed the contract and paid the first installment, he looked at me and said, “May I ask why you didn’t simply leave your wife, why you’re having recourse to a robot?” I answered that in spite of my great desire to live with my colleague I wanted to be sure I had a way back in case I changed my mind after a certain period. We often imagine that we have fallen in love and rush into divorce, only to be disappointed when it’s too late and regret is pointless and we’ve ruined our lives and the lives of those we love, without gaining anything. The man agreed and we arranged that he would contact me when my order was completed. A month later he was in touch and when I entered the factory I was amazed to see a robot exactly like me, sitting there talking and joking with the workers. I clapped a hand over my mouth to suppress a gasp of surprise and admiration and the robot did the same. The manufacturer, my waiter friend, had really done a good job. Even the hair was the same, brown interspersed with a little grey. I was delighted with the result.

  ‘“But what about making love? Does the robot want that?” I asked the man, feeling extremely embarrassed.

  ‘“It can do everything except sex! But I can add a program that will allow it to do that. However, this will take a long time and cost a lot of money. It’s a complex program.” He paused briefly. “But I deduced from what you said that you stopped sleeping with your wife after you fell in love with another woman.”

  ‘Then he went on to explain the other difference between me and the robot, which was a faint ringing sound issuing from one of the robot’s ears. Anxiously I asked, “Will this go on all the time? My wife’s hearing is as acute as a mole’s.”

  ‘“Don’t worry. Your wife won’t hear it unless she puts her ear exactly on top of its right ear. And even if she does that, she’ll just think there’s something wrong with your ear or the sound is coming from the fridge.”

  ‘“I have an idea. Why don’t I turn up at home with a hearing aid to make her think that my hearing has got worse recently and that’s why I’ve been so quiet?” I asked.

  ‘“You’re one step ahead of me,” laughed the robot-maker.

  ‘Then I asked the final question: “But you haven’t told me how the robot stops moving and talking.”

  ‘“When it’s asleep, like us,” he answered.

  ‘“No, I meant when I want to dispense with its services. How do I kill it?”

  ‘“By pressing on its right ear. And if you want to reactivate it, you press on the same ear, just like a computer.”’

  Yvonne quickly moves close to James, putting her ear against his. ‘Ah, I can’t hear any ringing. You’re the original. Come on, now tell me how your wife left you.’

  ‘I won’t finish my story until I make sure that you’re real and not a robot. Maybe my wife sent you to spy on me.’ He puts his mouth on her right ear and she hears the breath escaping his lips. Is he telling her he’s married? That’s of no consequence to her, for he’s attractive and entertaining. Wasn’t she on the point of having a relationship with his legs alone?

  ‘Listen, my friend, to what happened the day I decided to leave my wife. I crept out of bed to wait for the robot-maker to come at dawn with my twin in pyjamas like mine. Then all I had to do was press the robot’s ear to activate it and it would head off to the bedroom and everything would be fine. But I suddenly remembered I’d left my phone on the table by the bed. When I went back into the bedroom, my wife asked, “What’s happened? I heard a lot of noise.” “Sorry,” I said. “I was in the toilet for ages. I don’t know what I ate last night. I’ve got a bit of a stomach ache so I took something for it.” Reluctantly I got back into bed and pretended to go to sleep but as she was restless, I found myself moving close to her and taking her in my arms so that she would go back to sleep, imitating our dog that we lost a year ago, who used to snuggle into one of us to help himself fall asleep. My wife fidgets again. Does she think that because I’m holding her tightly I’m beginning to want to make love to her? I pull her closer to me, afraid she’ll get up and go down to the kitchen and see the robot. I breathe into her neck. She fidgets. I rest my face against hers and hear a faint ringing coming from her, or have I imagined it? I start in fear and she asks, “Are you in pain?” “A little,” I say. “Let’s go to sleep.” I tried not to move once I’d taken her in my arms again and held my breath, hoping she would go deeply asleep so that I could make my escape, and there was the ringing once more. I brought my ear close to her right ear and the ringing grew louder. Abruptly I pressed on her ear with all the strength I could summon and the ringing stopped and everything in her stopped. I began shaking her, shouting at her, slapping her cheeks. I tried to open her eyes. It was no use.’

  James buries his head in his hands, then looks up and asks Yvonne, ‘Did she beat me to it because she had a lover of her own, or did the robot-maker tell her what I was planning? Where is she? I just want to know the truth.’

  ‘But you’re free of her, of the responsibility of deciding whether to leave her, and now you can live with your colleague, your lover, without feeling guilty, while your wife is the one chewing her fingernails and maybe regretting what she has done.’

  ‘But I want to know who she’s fallen in love with and when it happened.’

  Yvonne holds him, comforting him as if he’s her child, and says, ‘Perhaps your robot and hers could live together. That’s the best solution in my opinion. What do you think?’

  ‘But why am I suffering, I wonder? Do I still love her? How can I love someone who’s been unfaithful to me? Is it curiosity to find out what happened, or dented self-esteem?’

  ‘But the two of you are even now. Don’t forget that you were unfaithful too. Won’t you take me to the robot-maker? I want him to make an exact copy of me that can sometimes go to the office in my place. You haven’t told me what you did with your robot. Can I hire it? I’d like it to come and live with me.’

  He approaches her ear. ‘Oh, what a beautiful ringing sound and it smells of perfume too. The name is somewhere in the back of my mind, but I can’t recall it now.’

  Rather than satisfying her hunger, his sweet talk makes it more acute. ‘It’s …’

  ‘No, no, let me think carefully. Musk and sandalwood? Or jasmine and amber?’

  ‘It’s amber and vanilla.’

  ‘Of course, you’re waging chemical warfare to catch men.’

  He leans in towards her. As he reaches her lips and touches them with his, a miracle happens: her mind turns into a blank page, the past and the future erased from it. The kiss lasts until they both need to breathe.

  ‘I like this robot’s kiss. Is it sparrows’ tongues with sumac and thyme?’

  ‘Who cooked that dish for you? Don’t say it was my aunt!’

  ‘Of course it was. On my last visit to Lebanon.’

  ‘Did she tell you how she thought of this dish?’

  ‘I didn’t ask her. I was too busy eating and looking at her legs. They were fantastic!’

  ‘It was my aunt who invented this recipe on her son’s wedding night so that when he was alone with his bride he would deflower her as if he was Samson the Giant and—’

  ‘Who’s Samson the Giant? A Lebanese weightlifter?’

  ‘No, he’s the Lebanese Minister of Defence who always introduced himself as “the Minister of Boum Boum”. The point is that my aunt went out into the fields to catch birds by putting wax on tree branches and scattering almonds and pine nuts and sugar on them so that when the birds came to peck them their little feet would get stuck in the wax and my aunt would hurry to cut out their tongues then she’d set them free. She prepared such a delicious dish that her son forgot about his bride waiting for him and asked his mother to make him another plate of birds’ tongues. The next day the bride came out on to the balcony stretching happily, delighted at the way her wedding night had turned out as her groom had kept going all night long, his resolve never flagging. Suddenly she heard a sparrow talking to her. “You theem happy, you thlut.” He l
ooks at her in disgust and another sparrow comes past and says the same thing: “You theem happy, you thlut,’ then a third, fourth and fifth, a whole flock of sparrows chanting: “You theem happy, you thlut.”’

  James laughs, pulls her towards him, laughs some more, kisses her again. The kiss this time feels like a butterfly alighting on a flower, then the butterfly folds its wings and the kiss is more like an iron pressing silk. He kisses her once more and bites her ear. ‘Look, I’ve stopped the robot working. I can take you and do what I want with you.’

  Yvonne pulls him towards her, he responds, entwining his legs and thighs with hers, but the appearance of some guests stepping outside to smoke makes Yvonne disentangle herself from the embrace.

  She and James go back to their table to find it set with dishes of Iranian food. James and the other guests around the table eat with appetite and obvious enjoyment, while she alone is content to enjoy the smells, like a dog, and furtively observe James’s legs.

  ‘And now tell me how you founded your business,’ says James eventually.

  ‘I saw a television programme about grouper fish: the females live in rocky caves among coral and seaweed while the males live outside, guarding and protecting them. But if a predator kills the males, a female can change her colour from red to deep purple and become a male, with the ability to fertilise the females. I decided to imitate a grouper: I fertilised myself and worked hard until I had my own business!’

  ‘Did you flee the war with your family?’

  ‘No, Ingmar Bergman whispered to me that I should leave Lebanon.’

  ‘Ingmar Bergman in person!’

  ‘Yes, in person! I was watching a Cypriot television channel. My brother was in a Christian militia and he ran an electric cable from the presidential palace. I’d never seen a film that wasn’t American before. The Swedish language began to whisper in my ear as I saw the characters suffering in silence. They complained about their troubles to the clouds and to the sky that hung close to the sea. The pale light in the film, when the only light we had in the pitch black darkness of our town was the gleam of cats’ eyes, the whole atmosphere, made me feel comfortable and safe for the first time and forget the war raging in Lebanon, so I thought about going to Sweden.’

  ‘And did you go to Sweden, really?’

  ‘No. I came directly to London with a politician’s family from our area in northern Lebanon as a nanny to their daughter, although I was only eighteen. After a couple of years I discovered that I could work and study at the same time, so I registered at an art college. And the rest you’re starting to find out.’

  ‘The rest I know, apart from one thing: have you become a female again, or are you still a male like a grouper?’

  ‘Why don’t you find out for yourself?’

  ‘I’ll try after I’ve answered the call of nicotine. It’s crying out to me.’

  She stops herself asking if she can come with him.

  James comes back from his cigarette break talking to a dark-haired woman who looks Iranian, with golden skin and kohl-rimmed eyes. Oh God, don’t tell me he likes people who are the opposite of him, when I’m blonde like him.

  They stand there, engrossed in conversation. The woman nods her head. Is he telling her the story of the robot or the sparrows’ tongues? They walk a bit and then stop again. Now the woman’s probably telling him her life story. They head for the table by the mirror. Yvonne’s heart lurches. Is he going to sit with the woman and let someone else sit in his place? ‘The bird delouses itself while the hunter is on tenterhooks.’ The men in her area used to compare a worried person to a hunter, and the unconcerned object of his anxiety to a bird, calmly picking lice out of its feathers. James returns to his place and everything in her rejoices. Perhaps the Iranian woman was the hunter and James the bird.

  ‘Hi, did you see the woman I was with over there by that table? She reminded me of the woman I used to be in love with.’

  ‘The robot.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘So the robot’s real!’

  He is silent briefly. ‘We split up two years ago. What can I tell you! When we made love it was incredible. Thinking about it drives me crazy.’

  ‘Have you tried to contact her?’

  ‘She did, once, by mistake.’

  Yvonne pinches her thigh, tensing the muscles in her bottom automatically, as usual when confronted by a hurtful situation. Her stomach and bottom are focal points for her, like breathing. She feels ashamed of herself now. She’d imagined that the magnetism she felt was based on mutual attraction, but the door has slammed in her face once more.

  ‘Why don’t you get back together? Does she still love you too?’

  ‘Love sometimes turns people into monsters. Let’s change the subject.’

  ‘It frightens me to think that we have to forget about a person who is so important to us, the oxygen we used to breathe. Cutting such a person out of our lives is like amputating a limb. Aren’t we being untrue to ourselves if we do this? How can we turn our backs on such an important period of our lives, imagine that we have to live at a distance from those who have given us profound experiences, even if they involved pain and bitterness?’

  He brings her hand up to his mouth and plants dozens of kisses on it. ‘You seem to have suffered in love like me.’

  She nods in agreement, even though she hasn’t been talking about a lover, but about the past and her family and Lebanon. One memory after another, they pound in her head like the thud of the pestle in the mortar that she longs for now to remind her of normal life. These pestles and mortars were made of brass and she used to hear the pounding noises coming from the other houses and wish she lived there instead of in their house. The mothers in the other houses weren’t bigheaded like her mother, who had never used a pestle and mortar in her life. She’d even planted basil in theirs, while the other mothers used them to crush garlic and black pepper. Yvonne had lived for seventeen years in that house anchored on the seashore in peace and in war, impervious to the changing seasons; she used to think she too was tied to the place with thick ropes like ships’ ropes, but with each visit to Lebanon she found the ropes that bound her had begun to fray, to disintegrate, to dissolve as if they were made of salt.

  ‘Now I want a recipe for a Lebanese dish that I’ve never tasted or even heard about in my life.’

  ‘How about praying mantis with garlic and cumin?’

  ‘Praying mantis? The green insect with a head like ET? Do you eat them in Lebanon? I suppose you must eat the females to avenge the males. As I’m sure you know, the females eat the males after they’ve had sex. Are you intending to do that with me tonight?’

  ‘That depends on you.’

  If they did spend the night together, she would make him forget his lover; but she wonders if he has invented the whole story.

  He kisses her beside her mouth and stands up. He wants a refill and all the bottles ranged along their table are empty.

  ‘Can I top you up?’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  Is this all a dream? Everything around her has become meaningless. An Iranian couple invite her to dance with them. Perhaps they noticed that she was on her own. She tries to make her excuses; she prevaricates; she doesn’t want James to come back and not find her. When she accepts their invitation and joins in the dancing, she keeps her eyes fixed on the table. He hasn’t returned. She looks around a few moments later and he is behind her, dancing alone. She rushes over to him and pokes him in the stomach. He opens his eyes, smiles and takes her in his arms. They continue dancing together. She puts her arms round his waist and tells him that Ghulam’s relatives insisted she dance with them and that she was afraid he would come back and not find her.

  ‘But I haven’t met you before. My name is James. What’s yours?’

  They embrace and she offers him her lips. It is a long kiss. She has experienced a drought and now the spring is bursting with sweet water again. They disengage their lips in order to drift
away into their own worlds. James stays where he is, dancing, his eyes closed; she continues to dance but her eyes never leave him.

  She pinches James’s hand; he opens his eyes, takes her in his arms and carries on dancing. Everyone is dancing, each person in love with someone they know or a complete stranger, or with the music, or anything else. Love moves around, jumping from person to person, like a bee sipping nectar and dropping pollen; the tighter she holds James, the tighter he holds her.

  His eyelids are closed over two turquoises; his voice filters down to her in a whisper, perhaps because he is so tall; it drops gently on to her thumping heart. Enough of all this waiting, or maybe she enjoys tormenting herself! He holds her close even though his eyes are shut. They are the source of her suffering: imprisoned within them is someone other than her. She circles around herself incessantly, like an insect that risks being burnt on the light at any moment. Music is the logic now, reminding her that if she’s not in a relationship, it’s not because she’s possessive or lacking in self-confidence, or because she tries to seduce men with her money, but only because she’s never been lucky enough to meet an amazing person like James.

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘How old are you? I haven’t asked you how old you are!’

  ‘Thirty-seven.’

  ‘I’m thirty-three.’ She subtracts a couple of years. He holds her tight, kissing her near her eyes as if he wants to sip from her skin. He must be tired of bending down to reach her lips. Perhaps he suffers from back pain. She wonders if he has more vertebrae than her.

  ‘James, they’re bringing sweets made from Yemeni honey.’ No response. ‘Yemeni honey has a special aroma. I wonder where Yemeni bees get their nectar. Perhaps from henna flowers … chestnut henna!’

  He carries on dancing, or his legs do. Are they what decide to keep dancing, or is it his mind? She tries again: ‘Shall we go back to the table, and have some dessert?’

  He doesn’t answer her. She’ll try again. She’s a masochist, yes, a masochist. The conventional definition of masochism is wrong. Masochism is the friend of those who want to make themselves happy, who persist in looking for love rather than being content with despair and regret. Her analyst once shouted at her: ‘You prefer other people to yourself. That’s a mistake. You have to be number one.’ Now Yvonne shouts at the top of her voice, in Arabic: ‘When I find my other half, then I’ll become one.’