In the Kingdom of Men

by Kim Barnes

  I turned the last corner, saw the Land Cruiser just pulling away, and remembered the chili I had promised Abdullah. I wanted to run after him, call him back, tell him about Ruthie and all that Lucky had told me, but it was too late. I turned to see Yash sitting on our porch, peering south toward the Empty Quarter.

  “Memsahib,” he said when he saw me, and stood up quickly to hold the door. I followed him into the kitchen, sat at the counter, and watched him begin to prepare my lunch, balancing a pineapple by its stem, making quick diagonal cuts to remove the eyes, the miniature trenching like a ribbon winding the fruit. His knife was the only sound until I mustered the will to speak.

  “Yash?” I asked quietly.

  “Yes, memsahib?”

  “Do you believe in God or Allah or whatever your people call him?”

  He hesitated a moment before gentling his gaze as a physician might. “You miss your friend,” he said.

  “It’s not just that,” I said, and wiped my cheeks with my knuckles. “I’m sorry about what I said before.”

  “I have been impertinent,” he said. “It is I who must apologize.”

  “Please, will you just call me Gin?” I said, and saw his face soften.

  He rested his knife. “May I move your tea to the dining room?” he asked.

  “Our tea,” I said, and he dipped his head once. We went to the table, where he pulled out our chairs and filled our cups. Who else did I have to turn to? Who else could I trust?

  I pinched the tablecloth, trying to find a way into my questions. “I need to be honest with you about something,” I said. “I hope that you will be honest with me.”

  “Of course, Mrs. Gin.”

  “Something is happening,” I said. “I’m afraid that Mason is in trouble.” I looked to see his response, but his face didn’t change. “Tell me what you know about Lucky and Buck Bodeen.”

  He cleared his throat. “Mr. Bodeen and Mr. Doucet drank together. They spoke a certain kind of French they believed I didn’t understand.”

  “I found Lucky at the theater,” I said. “He told me that he and Buck Bodeen were cheating the company out of money.”

  “Yes,” he said. “With Alireza.”

  I stopped, surprised, but why? All that dusting, tidying, making order, that hearing of everything. I realized that Yash must have known all along.

  “What if Mason decided he was going to tell someone?” I asked. “What if Lucky said he’d better leave it alone, but then Mason didn’t?”

  Yash’s eyes came up, sharp and sudden, a look that cut to the quick of my fear.

  “Tell me what you’re thinking,” I said.

  “I think that you should speak with Mr. Mason and tell him what Mr. Doucet told you.” Yash held my gaze. “Tell him that the wrong people know that he has made a discovery.”

  I looked at the clock. Mason was already on the return launch, unreachable. Hours would have to go by. Yash saw the look on my face.

  “Maybe some rum,” he said, but I shook my head. “Rummy, then,” he said, got out the cards, and poured more tea. The news of Ruthie’s death, Lucky’s words in the theater—already, it felt like the day had stretched on forever, like we were marooned in some kind of tea party hell.

  What else could I do but take up the cards that Yash so carefully dealt? We played one round and then another. I began counting the drips of the still. How many seconds to fill one bottle?

  “My mother often said that a patient soul endures what heaven ordains,” Yash said gently.

  “I don’t believe in heaven,” I said. “I don’t believe in anything anymore.” I dropped my hand. “I can’t stand just sitting here playing cards like nothing is wrong. I’ve got to talk to Mason.” I covered my eyes, afraid I was going to cry.

  Yash sat quiet for a moment, then lay down his cards, stood, and beckoned me to follow him to the hallway, where he opened the doors of the linen closet.

  “Let us fold,” he said.

  I looked at the towels and sheets. “But they’re perfect,” I said.

  He reached in, swept each of the shelves clean, then motioned me to sit before joining me on the floor. I stared at the pile, too much like the chaos I was feeling, then took up one of the towels and doubled it down the way Yash had always done, surprised when he stopped me.

  “As you were taught,” he said.

  It took me a moment to remember—three down, three across—and Yash followed my lead. The soft cloth in my hands, the repetitive motion that necessitated a simple concentration—I felt my fingers find their rhythm, my shoulders let go their cramp.

  “When Mason gets home, I’ll tell him what Lucky said.” I nodded to assure myself. “Mason will know what to do.”

  “Of course he will,” Yash said. “He is an intelligent and reasonable man.”

  “And Lucky was so drunk,” I said. “He wasn’t thinking straight because of Ruthie. He probably didn’t even know what he was saying.”

  “Quite possible,” Yash said.

  I tucked my chin to still the tremor of my words. “I wish I weren’t so helpless,” I said.

  “The fact is that you are a woman,” Yash said, “and in possession of great power.”

  “What power?” I asked.

  “Your desire for knowledge,” Yash said. “It rattles the gods to their bloody core.”

  “It got us cast out of the Garden,” I said miserably, and smoothed an embroidered pillowcase. Yash took up its twin, ironed it against his thigh.

  “Do you remember,” he asked, “that there was another tree in that garden?”

  I thought for a moment, trying to recall. “The Tree of Life,” I said.

  “And what would have happened if Eve had eaten of that tree as well?” When I couldn’t answer, he bent in as though sharing a secret. “She would have lived forever.” He straightened, matched the corners of the pillowcase. “Immortal and wise, your Bible says, ‘as one of us.’ That is why Eve was banished, you see—not because of her error but because of God’s fear. She is your heroine.” Yash lifted his chin. “Remember that strength does not come from physical capacity but from an indomitable will.”

  “I like that,” I said.

  “So do I,” Yash said. “If not for Gandhi, I would have no words at all.” He considered the pile of linens covering his knees. “I began as a warrior, but see how meek I have become.”

  “You’ve always seemed brave to me,” I said.

  He leveled his shoulders. “Now see how readily I rise to the praise of a woman.”

  I laughed a little, grew somber again. I folded the pillowcase over, wondering at all the hours Betsy Bodeen had labored with her needle and thread.

  “But women, we’re always punished, aren’t we?” I asked. “For wanting to know, I mean.”

  Yash matched the selvage of a towel, worked it even, laid it on the top of the pile, and grew quiet. When I looked at him, I saw his eyes fixed on the empty shelves. “My wife wore a perfume that was undetectable unless I was very close to her,” he said, his voice distant, “like the first bloom of a shy flower. Not even the desert has taken that memory from me.” His gaze dropped to his hands, and he pressed his palms against his thighs. “I remember nothing of my mistress.”

  I lifted my eyes. I had imagined Yash as an ardent young lover, even his bitter grief the dark matter of romance. I had never considered that he might have been unfaithful to the woman he had wooed and won.

  “You’ve asked me to be honest,” he said. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, I saw how deeply he had gone inside himself. “The truth is that I returned home one evening from a liaison,” he said, “and my wife suspected my indiscretion. She insisted that I tell her everything, and when I refused, she would not let me into our bed.” He fell silent, his fingers curled against a washcloth. When he began to speak again, his words were hushed, almost a whisper. “I believed that it was my right as her husband, and I forced myself upon her.” When I lowered my gaze, he nodded gra
vely. “Yes,” he said, “now you see what kind of man I really am.”

  “We all make mistakes,” I said quietly.

  “Please, Mrs. Gin,” he said. “Do not embarrass us both by excusing my actions.” He dropped his chin, shaped the cloth’s corners. “My son was conceived that night. My wife bore the pregnancy like a burden. When the child was born, it was as though the seed of rage I had planted split her in two. They could not stop the bleeding.” He pressed the square with both palms, raised his eyes. “You asked if I believe in God. If not, why do I curse him?”

  “My grandfather believed that cursing God will buy you eternity in hell,” I said.

  “A thousand hells are owed me, then.” Yash drew another washcloth to his knee, but his fingers had lost their purpose. “Perhaps now you will hate me as I hate myself.”

  I looked away. “I could never hate you,” I said, and gathered myself, my words hesitant. “I wasn’t married when I got pregnant, but I meant for it to happen. Maybe so I could escape, I don’t know. When the baby died inside of me, it felt like I was being punished, like it was what I deserved, but I never considered what it might do to Mason. All I could think about was myself.”

  We sat in silence, listening to the steady drip of the still, until Yash shoveled a tower of sheets between his hands, stood, and placed them in the closet. When we had restocked all the shelves, he pushed back his shoulders, took a sharp breath through his nose.

  “I believe we have confessed enough sins for one day,” he said. He tightened his lips, and I saw his eyes fill with tears. “Your questions have dislodged the cork from the bottle,” he said softly. “I cannot stop thinking of her.”

  “Your son is still there,” I said. “You could go back and see him.”

  He offered a pained smile. “It is not like in America,” he said, “where you can be forgiven. Guilt is one thing. There is no redemption in shame.”

  I watched him turn and make his way into the kitchen, all the starch gone from his spine. I worked my way through the remaining linens, trying not to think about anything but the task in front of me. At the bottom of the pile, I found the missing Sunday tea towel, still stretched on its small hoop, its appliqué unfinished, the needle and floss pricked through the cotton.

  It seemed like years since I had sewn anything, but when I pulled the needle free, its feel was familiar, and the chain stitch, the running stitch, the cross stitch came back to me. I bent over the towel, following the zigzag pattern of the blanket on which the little Indian boy sat cross-legged, smoking a peace pipe on his day of rest. I knotted the thread, bit it close, released the hoop, and felt a small satisfaction, as though I had finished what Betsy Bodeen had begun.

  Just be patient, I told myself, and heard my grandfather’s words: “In order to move the world, you must learn to be still.” He had meant the hours I might spend in my prayer closet, but I never knelt long enough to pink my knees. Now I had no choice but to wait for Mason to come home, just as I had been doing since the day we married, only now I had this awful fear to keep me company.

  I rose, found my book. Every few minutes, I checked out the window for Abdullah, hoping that he would reappear, park at my step like a guardian at the gate. Our conversation during the shamal seemed strange to me now, as though, like Dorothy and her tornado, I had dreamed my way through the storm. The Volkswagen remained outside my door. With Ruthie and Lucky gone, who would come to claim it?

  Yash and I worked on the dinner together, which helped to pass the time: chicken and walnuts in creamy gravy, okra with onions and spices, and, always, the rice. Our hesitance in the kitchen had turned to habit, our movements efficiently timed, but as the evening wore on, an uneasy silence fell between us. Yash glanced at the clock, and I knew that, like me, he was expecting the door to swing open at any moment, Mason to haul in.

  That hour went by, and then another. The gravy thickened in its pan, the rice clumped, and still neither of us said what we were thinking, not a word about what could be wrong, as though to speak our fears might make them come true.

  “Maybe I’ll go for a quick swim,” I said.

  Yash nodded his agreement and covered the dishes. “This will keep well enough in the oven.”

  I drove the few blocks in the Volkswagen, hoping that, like washing a car to bring on rain, my leaving the house would draw Mason home. The suntan lotion in the jockey box, the residual sweetness of Ruthie’s perfume brought her back to me, and I tightened my grip on the wheel. At the pool, I slid into the lukewarm water, miming what I remembered of Nadia’s grace as the moon broke free of the flares and plied its light alongside me. If I narrowed my vision, I could almost believe I was outside of the compound, swimming in the sea beneath the desert stars—easier to believe than my memory of the theater, Lucky hovering over me like a barbarous saint. I took a deep breath, ducked under water, and stayed there as long as I could until the only thought in my head was breaking the surface, breathing again.

  When I arrived back home, the porch light seemed too bright, and I squinted against its glare. I didn’t have to go in to know that Mason wasn’t there. I sat for a long time with the windows rolled down, taking in the night air, the crickets, the strange bark of an eagle owl hunting the grass, until I knew that Yash would be worried. He met me in the hallway, his face etched with a kind of intense concern I hadn’t seen before. He urged me inside, locked the door, and motioned me into the kitchen as though someone might hear.

  “What?” I insisted, my voice sharp with alarm.

  “While you were gone,” he said, “two militiamen came to the door, asking for Mr. Mason.” He turned on the burner, ran water for tea, and I saw the sweat beading his upper lip.

  “Did you tell them that he’s on his way home?” I asked.

  “They say he was not on the launch,” Yash said.

  “Then he’s still on the platform,” I said, but Yash shook his head.

  “Then where is he?” I asked.

  Yash set the tea to steep. “They say he is nowhere.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” I said. “Everyone has got to be somewhere.” The simplest of answers to a child’s riddle.

  “We will take some tea,” Yash said.

  “I don’t want tea,” I said, and rapped the counter so hard that Yash jumped. “I want to know where Mason is.”

  He took a patient breath. “I hope that I may teach you two things while living in this place,” he said gently. “The first will be to maintain your manners even in the face of crisis. The second will be to hold your tea.”

  He placed a cup and saucer in front of me, but I sat unmoving, trying to remember everything that Lucky had said. It wasn’t just panic or fear that I felt but the sensation of my mind floating away, as though my head had come unhinged, separated itself from my body.

  “Something has happened,” I said.

  “Perhaps he has only gone to Bahrain,” Yash said, “taken an impromptu holiday.”

  “He wouldn’t do that without telling me.” Not Mason McPhee.

  Yash didn’t respond but positioned my plate of food, warm from the oven. I watched him roll up his shirt cuffs, run hot water over the dishes.

  “What if he doesn’t come home?” I asked.

  “If not today, then tomorrow,” Yash said. The thought of his leaving, of facing the coming hours alone, brought with it a wave of panic.

  “We have the extra room,” I said. “Maybe you could just stay.”

  Yash hesitated for a long moment, then dipped his head. “Of course, Mrs. Gin.”

  I ate what I could for him, then stood with my plate, and we washed the dishes together before going to our separate rooms, offering our soft good nights, and closing our doors quietly against the other, the air a tender bruise between us.

  Chapter Sixteen

  If these were your two choices—to be paralyzed by fear and helplessness or to rise up, lash out—which would you choose? Always I had been willing to take my chances, survive whatever con
sequence came my way, and this time was no different.

  That willful girl I had always been came back into me as I lay through the night, trying to make sense of what was happening. If Mason had been delayed by mechanical breakdown or bad weather, the company would know where he was and wouldn’t have sent the militia to our door. No part of me was willing to consider that he had simply taken some kind of joyride to Bahrain. It was Lucky’s words that rang like a threat—that boy never listen. By the time the sun broke the horizon, I believed I couldn’t wait any longer. Someone knew where Mason was, and I was going to find out who.

  I rose before Yash, made scrambled eggs and bacon. He came into the kitchen, smoothing his hair, his shirt and trousers rumpled, as though he had slept in his clothes. He sat at the counter, and I took the seat next to him, piled our plates with food. I tore my toast in half, dunked it in my egg.

  “You eat like a boy,” Yash said. “I fear what you are about.”

  “I have a plan,” I said.

  “A plan? You are acting out of character,” he said, but his droll humor came tinged with regret.

  “Mason is out there somewhere,” I said, “and I’m going to find out where.”

  “I fear that I have encouraged you in this,” he said. “You should let me glean what I can from the other houseboys.”

  “And what are you going to tell them?” I asked. “That your sahib didn’t come home? That his wife is worried?” He dropped his gaze, and I saw what he was thinking: I had no idea the trouble I might get into. “I’m not afraid of Alireza,” I said.

  “It is not only Alireza,” Yash said, and I saw his lips tense. “I’m sure that you are being watched even now.”

  “Who is watching me?” I asked. “Do you mean Abdullah?”

  “Perhaps,” Yash said. “All I know is that if an intelligent and ambitious young man such as your husband were fomenting an agenda of solidarity among the Arab workers, it is difficult to imagine what measures the company might take to stop him. Mr. Mason’s efforts to uncover Alireza may provide his enemies the opportunity they need.” He brought his eyes to mine. “The company knows he is missing. If he has gone into hiding, they may hope that you will lead them to him. Why else hasn’t Mr. Fullerton or some chaplain come to your door?”