Nekropolis

by Maureen F. Mchugh

  Maybe not.

  * * *

  Akhmim gets a job serving in a restaurant. He is gone when I get home from work, and it seems as if I never see him.

  Miss Katrina tells me that we’re doing very well. I’m getting better at Spanish, although it seems to me that the only people I ever talk to are children.

  I come home at night and get off the bus and go up to the empty apartment. There’s nothing to do there except more Spanish, or entertainments on my slate. I can’t think after a day of work, so I sit on the cushions and play games on my slate until I’m hungry, and then play more until it’s time to go to bed. Once in a while I talk to Professor Malik or get a message from him, but that makes me think of Alem, and my chest tightens up, so often I don’t answer when it’s him.

  I am sitting playing an entertainment called Opt Ciudad. I like it because I don’t have to know a lot of Spanish, and it’s easy for people like me who haven’t done a lot of things on a slate-some of the entertainments go so fast that I always crash or get shot. But this one is about building a city, and about putting groceries where all the people in the city can get to them easily and roads and highways.

  Professor Malik calls and I answer, a little out of guilt and a little out of not thinking fast enough.

  “Miss Hariba,” he says. “How are you? How are the children?”

  I hate being interrupted in the middle of the game, but that’s wrong. I tell him about the children.

  “Did Akhmim get in touch with the chimera whose address I gave him?”

  “Pardon me?” I ask.

  “He called me and asked how he could get in touch,” Professor Malik says.

  “Oh yes,” I lie. “He’s at work right now. Since he works in the evening, I don’t get to talk to him.”

  “You must miss him,” Professor Malik says.

  “When did he call you?” I ask, trying to sound as if I just forgot.

  Professor Malik frowns, remembering. “Monday?”

  “Right,” I say. “That’s right. I don’t know if he’s had a chance to call yet.”

  “I knew he was lonely,” Professor Malik says.

  I think this call will never end.

  But at last it does and I sit there, thinking, for a long time, before I go back to playing Opt Ciudad.

  I go to bed before Akhmim gets home-I always go to bed before Akhmim gets home because he gets home so late and I get up so early. I even fall asleep a little bit. He comes in so silent, so careful, as always, not to wake me. I think he can tell that I’m awake, but if I don’t talk to him, he doesn’t talk to me.

  I should talk to him. I should ask him about it. But I know he has an answer and I can’t ask him. I’m afraid of what he’ll say, and what I’ll believe.

  * * *

  It’s like having a sore tooth, this idea of other harni . I worry at it and worry at it.

  On Friday I work, and on Saturday I can stay in bed late, so I don’t have to go to bed so early. I plan to stay up late. I want to talk to Akhmim. Of course, by Friday evening I’m so tired I think I’ll never be able to stay up and at ten I go to bed. But I can’t sleep. Akhmim didn’t tell me he had called Professor Malik.

  I’m going to ask him on Saturday.

  I can’t sleep and I’m still awake when Akhmim gets home.

  He’s quiet as a cat. When he gets into bed, I can smell his smell, and the smell of restaurant.

  He never kisses me. We’re like brother and sister. Maybe that’s what he needs.

  “Akhmim?”

  “What’s wrong?” he asks.

  I don’t know. “I miss you,” I say.

  “I miss you,” he says.

  “Do you remember how we used to sit in my room at Mbarek’s and talk?”

  “I remember,” he says. He rises up on one elbow, barely visible in the faint glow of the nightlight in the hallway. “Are you sad, Hariba?”

  “I am,” I say. “I really am. I feel so bad about Alem. It’s so hard here. It’s harder than I ever thought it would be.”

  He leans over and kisses me on the forehead. I lift my face and he kisses me on the lips. I love when he kisses me.

  “Kiss me more,” I whisper.

  He kisses me more, and I put my hand on his chest. What do people do when they want to make love? I put my arm around him, tentative. Doesn’t the man usually do that? But I’ve never wanted to do more than kiss with Akhmim. It’s like I’ve told him not to go any further, so now I have to show him.

  He puts his arm around me and draws me close.

  I’m so nervous. I’ve never seen him naked. I’ve never let him see me naked. Years ago, when Nouzha and I had talked, before I found out she was committing adultery with my brother Fhassin, she told me that the first time it hurt. I asked Ayesha after she got married and she said it was true, but then it got better.

  Did Nouzha have to go through that again with Fhassin? Does it hurt at first with every man? Or just with the first man?

  Akhmim strokes my back. It feels good. I don’t know what to do, though, since he has me pressed against him and I have one arm around him. Surely, if this is what he wants, he’ll take it. He kisses my jaw and my neck. It’s like one of the entertainments that the mistress used to watch.

  He lays me on my back and kisses me some more, and then strokes my breast through my nightgown and I startle.

  He stops.

  “It’s all right,” I say.

  “Shh,” he says, and kisses me some more. He doesn’t touch my breasts, though. Is he supposed to? O Allah, what am I doing?

  I’m supposed to wait until I marry. Will I ever be able to marry if I do this? Is Akhmim who I want to marry? Yes, I tell myself, I am already in love with Akhmim and I came all the way to Spain because of that love. (But the counselor’s voice is in my head, telling me that our relationship isn’t right.)

  Akhmim lies down next to me and strokes my forehead.

  “Are you tired?” I ask.

  “A little,” he says.

  “Me too,” I say.

  “I love you,” he says. And I didn’t even ask him to.

  He holds me against him until finally I’m too hot and I stretch out and fall asleep.

  * * *

  Saturday morning I’m all jittery. If he were a man, he wouldn’t have stopped. Is it my fault? Is it Allah’s will, protecting me?

  I want to ask him if he wants to have sex. I want to ask him if he wants to marry me, but I’m not supposed to ask, he is. Maybe this is what the counselor meant about having to resolve my relationship with Akhmim. Maybe I have to learn different ways because he’s a harni .

  Instead, I say, “I talked to Professor Malik, and he told me you called and asked how to get in touch with a harni .”

  I want it to sound just curious, but it comes out sounding irritated.

  Akhmim shrugs. “My counselor told me I should talk to another chimera.”

  Chimera, I think. Harni is a bad word.

  “Did you call?” I ask.

  Akhmim looks at me for a moment. “No,” he says.

  “Why not?” I ask.

  He says, watching me steadily the way he always does, “I was busy. It’s you I need.”

  “If your counselor says you should, then you should.”

  “Okay,” he says.

  He comes over to me and hugs me, and strokes my hair. “This is hard for you, all this change.”

  Normally I would just let him, but now it strikes me that he’s doing this to change the subject.

  “I think you should call,” I say. “Why don’t you call now? Maybe we could go and meet him. Or her.”

  “Him,” Akhmim says.

  Thank Allah.

  Akhmim lets go of me and steps back. “Right now?” he says.

  “Sure,” I say. “Why not?”

  “I’m tired,” Akhmim says. “I have to work tonight.”

  “Just calling isn’t so bad,” I say, merciless.

  He can’t refus
e me, I know that.

  He finds his slate and looks up the number. “Hola,” he says. “Me llamo Akhmim, yo soy una chimera y un amigo de Professor Malik.” His Spanish is better than mine. I can understand that he’s said hello and introduced himself as a friend of Professor Malik’s, but I have trouble following everything he says.

  Sunday. He says Sunday afternoon a couple of times, and he smiles and nods. I wish I could see the face on his slate, see who he’s talking to. He laughs, looking beautiful for the face I can’t see. Who, I realize, must be beautiful, too.

  Merciful Allah protect me.

  “His name is Ari,” Akhmim says. “He says we should come tomorrow at two o’clock. He says a lot of the chimera in the household will be around.”

  Akhmim’s face betrays nothing. He seems perfectly at ease with the idea.

  Oh, my painful heart.

  * * *

  Sunday afternoon and off we go, taking the bus past the bull-ring and then changing to another bus and then another bus because on Sunday some of the buses run and some don’t.

  I’m wearing my best clothes. As if I’m going to be able to compete with chimera. I’m sweating and so nervous I feel sick. Akhmim holds my hand tightly and chatters about everything that happened at the restaurant the night before.

  Finally we get off at a little apartment building, only three stories tall, concrete, and old-fashioned. Akhmim knocks on the door, still holding my hand.

  The chimera who answers is small and dark, flat-faced and bow-legged. I can’t tell for a moment if it’s a man or a woman, but I decide it’s a woman.

  “I’m here to see Ari,” Akhmim says.

  “This way,” the chimera says.

  Inside the apartment building has been changed so the first floor is all open like a house. In the back there are two more chimera working in the kitchen. They look identical to the one that let us in the door. The one that let us in takes us upstairs, and then up to the third floor.

  “At the back,” she says. We walk toward the back, passing an open door that looks in on a room where another chimera, this one small and Asian-looking, but ugly like the one that let us in the door, sits watching an entertainment. Every surface of the room is covered with something shiny, so the room glints and glitters. The chimera doesn’t look up when we pass.

  But there is space for four apartments at the back, and a door standing open. Akhmim calls hello, and a beautiful man comes to the door.

  “Akhmim,” he says, “and Hariba, hello!”

  His hair is straight and black and he looks as if he comes from India , but even though they look so different, he and Akhmim could be brothers. They’re the same height and they both have the same long legs, but it’s more than that. It’s the way they move. The way they stand, and both turn their faces to look at me.

  Ari invites us in. There are six women all sitting there, all beautiful.

  “This is where we live,” Ari says. “All the pleasure chimera.”

  My Spanish isn’t so good so Ari fetches a slate and translates for us. The first two floors are all labor chimera, mostly from South America, although some from Indonesia . And on this floor the front rooms are all Indonesian.

  “Except for poor Anna,” he says. He gestures toward a woman I didn’t notice. She’s standing in a doorway. She’s tall and broad and soft-looking, pale brown with placid brown eyes. “Anna is a nanny chimera. She’s only here until she can get work. But she needs a child, don’t you, Anna?”

  She smiles sadly and tears well up in her eyes.

  Nanny chimera, he explains through the slate, are very uncommon.

  “Would you like something to drink?” Ari asks.

  The other women are all sitting there and they look perfectly natural and very beautiful-four shades of blond, one redhead, and one dark-haired-but they aren’t doing anything and it feels as if they’re arranged, as if for a play. Their faces are all turned to me.

  “Do you want to see the rest?” one of them asks me. Her name is Maria Inez, she says. She has a beautiful voice and I can understand her pretty well when she talks. The rooms all connect to each other, but other than the sitting room and the kitchen, I can’t tell what they’re for. Some of them have big, huge beds, and one has a mat that covers most of the floor, and one of them has a bunch of chests of drawers in it.

  “Which is your room?” I ask.

  Maria Inez is blond and her hair is the hundred shades of honey-clover, buckwheat, orange blossom. She says, “This room.” It’s one of the rooms with a big bed, but it doesn’t have anyplace to keep her things and it doesn’t have a door. None of the rooms have doors.

  She’s…not watching me, exactly. When Akhmim looks at me, it doesn’t feel as if he’s watching me, but like Akhmim, she is always looking at me.

  “You’re very beautiful,” I say.

  “Thank you,” she says. “But it’s only because I’m a chimera. Your Spanish is very good.”

  “Not so good,” I say.

  When we get back to the sitting room, Akhmim is sitting, too, and they all look at me, and he’s one of them. One more beautiful face. The he scoots over for me to have a place to sit down and he’s my Akhmim again.

  “Are you impressed?” I ask the woman sitting next to me.

  “Oh yes,” she says. She is the redhead. All the women have long hair and it is soft and beautiful and they wear it down like children. “His name is Enrique.”

  “Does he live here?” I ask.

  “No,” she says. “We decided it was better if we lived apart.”

  “Do you miss him?” I ask.

  “Always,” she says. Her expression is like Akhmim’s. Calm, without pain. “But I’m happy here.”

  I look at Akhmim.

  He is looking at me, patient, calm. They are all looking at me. All alike.

  “Would you like to live here?” I ask.

  “It’s different for you and me,” he says. “I love you.”

  It’s not, though. And now I know it.

  * * *

  I need him. I’m alone in a strange country. That’s the difference. I can make him happy, I know I can.

  That night I ask him, “Do you want to make love?”

  He sits down next to me on one of the big cushions we use and kisses me on the forehead. “My sweet Hariba,” he says.

  “I love you,” I say. “You’re everything to me.”

  “And you to me.”

  “Do you feel as if…I mean, I know, men have urges,” I say.

  “We’re not like other people,” he says. “Our love is based on what we have here.” He touches my chest.

  It’s exactly what I would want him to say. Isn’t everything exactly what I would want him to say? “You’re saying that just for me.”

  He strokes my face, his fingers delicate and precise. “What do you want?” he says.

  “I want to know what you want,” I say.

  “I’m here, I want to be here with you.”

  “Do you want to be with the other harni ?”

  “I want you to be happy,” he says. “When you’re unhappy, it makes me unhappy.”

  “I want you to make love to me,” I say.

  “All right,” he says. He kisses my forehead, and then my mouth. “All right.” He kisses me gently on the lips, and then on my neck.

  It will hurt the first time, but then it gets better. That’s what everyone says. But it will change us. It will be like a marriage. I can be a wife to him, I can give him what he wants. It can be as if we were jessed to each other-has anyone ever done that?

  “Come,” he says, taking my hand and leading me to our bed. He sets me on the bed and kisses me again. I don’t feel anything. I’m waiting for some kind of feeling, some urge. I like when he kisses me, but I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel.

  He takes his shirt off. “Do you want to take off your dress?” he asks.

  “I…I guess,” I say. “Can we close the curtains?”

&nb
sp; He closes the curtains so the room is dim. It’s not late enough that the sun has gone down, and the curtains let the light shine through so everything in the room is washed in red. I take off my dress, but I’m still wearing my shift. He’s seen me in my shift before. When I was sick, he saw me in my shift a lot.

  “Do you want me to take my clothes off?” he asks.

  “Yes,” I whisper. I wish he wouldn’t ask. I wish he would just do it. My face is hot from embarrassment.

  He takes off his pants, and his underwear, and I can see what he looks like. I’ve never seen a naked man before, and I want to look, but I don’t, so I look at him a little, and then I look up at his face and promise myself I’ll just keep looking at his face.

  He sits down next to me on the bed and kisses me again. “You have such nice skin,” he says. “And I love your hair, my Hariba. I think of you all the time.”

  “I love you,” I say helplessly.

  He kisses me and has me lay back on the bed. He carefully touches my breasts and I don’t flinch this time. I won’t flinch, no matter what he does.

  He kisses me a lot, and strokes me with his hands. He kisses between my breasts, and then he has me sit up and he pulls my shift off me so I’m only wearing my underwear. He kisses between my breasts again, this time on the bare skin. I have goose bumps.

  “Are you cold?” Akhmim asks.

  “I’m okay,” I say. I will make him happy. I try to smile as if I’m happy. When I get more used to this, I’ll be better at it.

  He touches my chest and my belly. He touches my knees and my arms and then my thighs. I try to smile at him.

  “Does this feel good?” he asks.

  “Yes,” I say. I don’t care what it feels like.

  He lays next to me and takes my hand. “I like this,” he says. “Just like this. I like being with you like this.”

  I glance down to see if he’s aroused, and he is. I want to believe he likes lying here with me this way, but if he’s aroused, then surely he wants to go further. I try to think of what to do. I kiss him. “I want you,” I say.

  He kisses me gently, and then he touches me. I don’t flinch. He rubs me and after a moment it feels good and I can really smile at him a little.