After that summer, I never needed an invitation to enter the villa again. I simply pushed the door open. I had a place at the table and behaved like a member of the family. Niloufar’s mother invited me to have tea or play a game of cards. Niloufar had adopted me like the brother she had never had. She confided her secrets in me more and more. I knew her taste in music, books, and her love of poetry. The walls between us seemed to be dissolving little by little, becoming thinner, more transparent. We swam together, and she taught me how to hold my breath. Even Tamba the dog had adopted me as his substitute master. He obeyed me and followed me on the beach. I hung out less often with the circle of boys, and I accepted the jibes they threw my way with a certain disdain. Our fraternal relationship suited me for the proximity it created between us, but its nature broadened our carnal distance. Niloufar behaved around me more and more like a sister, but I didn’t feel like her brother. I continued to watch her discreetly. Her body flustered me if I touched her while we were swimming or when we squabbled. Sometimes she realized it and adjusted her T-shirt or pulled on the bottom of her skirt. She would ask me, when I seemed far away, daydreaming, lost in the features of her face, in the black of her eyes: “What are you looking at? What are you thinking about?” “Oh, nothing special,” I would answer, trying to get a hold of myself. I had hoped that the three years’ age difference between us would matter less over time. But I was wrong. She never had even the slightest amorous sentiment toward me. I had to settle for what I had, the assumed place of brother. Like Mohamad-Réza, who settled for what he had. The embankment, a few pieces of lingerie, the shed, and the window.
Mohamad-Réza was caught in the act one night. In the shed, his head through the window and his pants around his ankles. He didn’t try to flee. He stayed there with his mouth agape, paralyzed, without even trying to pull his pants back up. And during all those long minutes when the Doctor smacked him with rage, he didn’t lose his erection. They put him on his knees, like a torture victim, he remained immobile until the gendarmes arrived. He said nothing, keeping his head down. He started to hum a song. Which one? No one ever knew.
Niloufar saw everything from her window and cried.
I saw Niloufar cry two times. Once, when they grabbed Mohamad-Réza from her window and beat him and handcuffed him, and years later, when she was beaten and handcuffed in her turn. Those two times, it wasn’t out of weakness, nor out of sadness, but out of rage. They say that history repeats itself twice—the second time is not necessarily as farce.
The rain arrived the day after Mohamad-Réza’s arrest and, with it, the exodus of the summer vacationers from the seaside toward town. Niloufar and her family were among the first to leave. In the following days, no one among the survivors of summer lit the fire on the beach. The circle of boys disbanded and wouldn’t reunite until the next summer. We knew that Mohamad-Réza had said nothing during his interrogation, not about the underwear they had found in his pocket, nor about the circumstances in which they had found him, and thus nothing about me. He had maintained a stubborn silence. The Doctor had not pressed charges, deeming that the lout had been punished enough. We didn’t see Mohamad-Réza again in Chamkhaleh, nor in our town. As soon as he was released, he was sent to live with his uncle in another town for the last year of high school. He came back four years later, the day before the mass uprising that overthrew the monarchy in order to install the first Islamic Republic in history. Over the course of those four years, he had transformed into a big burly giant, practically doubled in size. His V-shaped chest and his muscular forearms were no doubt the result of long hours of physical fitness. I saw him very little. He walked with his head high, his gaze empty, his arms and thighs somewhat spread out from his body, with the gait of fighters and neighborhood thugs, indifferent to matters of the town. He didn’t get back in touch with his former friends. Nor with me. He often appeared in the company of his father, whom he was helping in the starch factory. With his new attitude, he wanted to show us that he had turned the page. But, deep down, that was not at all the case.
§
I returned to Chamkhaleh not long ago. The village isn’t the same anymore. Victim to its years of glory, it has swapped its soul for the riches of the city. I took the bridge that crosses the river, forced to park my car in a parking lot and walk toward the sea, and saw all the horrors of our time concentrated in one place. Where there had been cottages with straw roofs and wood bungalows, they had erected concrete to house the summer vacationers. The main dirt path that led toward the sea in times past, with strips of soft sand on the roadsides, had been paved with cracked concrete and bordered with convenience stores and small motels. The sea, whose level had risen over the past decade, inundating a good part of the coast, had withdrawn and was unfurling timidly at the edge of the beach, in its former place. I went into the village, which now resembled a marshaling yard to divide up the tourists by category and herd them toward the hotels, the guest rooms, and the seasonal rental bungalows. I turned around and took one of the side roads to the right. I was able to find my way through the labyrinth of redesigned streets and eventually recognized Villa Rose. Still facing the sea, but hidden by a man-made hill that had been erected to cut off its view. The villa, though a bit faded, had kept its pink tint. It was the off-season and empty, like many houses. I walked along the wall. Behind the villa, I found the low wall with the cinder block, the electric pole that adjoined it and, higher up, the bit of framework coming out of the concrete that had served as a handle. I hadn’t forgotten any of these steps. I scaled the wall without too much difficulty. From the other side, the small shed was calmly in its place. Its roof squeaked a bit more beneath my fifty years, and I slid down its slope to land in the garden. The bedroom window had been closed off with wooden slats. The terrace was covered in sand and dead leaves. Ivy and other wild plants were growing in the cracks of the walls and between the tiles. The balcony chairs were all rusted, and the surface of the table was warped. Where would Nilou’s mother put her cup of tea and her book if she decided to live here again? I did a tour of the house. All the doors and windows were locked from the inside. All except for one door that appeared to be ill-fitting in its frame. I was able to push it open without too much difficulty. The villa seemed to have been used as a squat. Floor littered with plastic bottles, wrappers, and food scraps. A few improvised beds here and there. A hangout for junkies? Perhaps. Niloufar’s bedroom wasn’t any better. The bed had been broken and shoved in a corner. The blue dress was missing from the gutted armoire. All the objects of value had been taken. I started to search. I didn’t know what for exactly, but something that might have eluded the pillaging. A pillaging I had contributed to in my own way, as small as it might have been. That thing must have been somewhere. A sign of the time that had passed between these walls. A memory of those burned years. Even if only just a pin, a button wedged in a parquet floor groove, a bit of seashell collected by Niloufar during one of her long dives underwater. But no, nothing. Just the snickering ruins of the past. The vestiges of our wasted lives.
Through the window and the cracked glass, the song of the sea flooded into the bedroom. With time, the hill erected opposite the open sea had flattened, returning to the villa a portion of its beautiful view of the waves. Through the other window, I saw the small shed, still standing, with its wooden door and its tragic window.
During the school year, for every vacation, I always went to Rasht, where Niloufar lived with her family. As with Villa Rose, their door remained open to me. The Doctor welcomed me gracefully, no doubt for the trusted favor I had done him. When it came to memories of the summer, we avoided mentioning the incident with Mohamad-Réza. An excessive caution that showed Niloufar was still very affected by it. During my trips to their house, I spent the majority of my time with her. Her father was often absent, and her mother very busy with her role as a modern woman of high society. She was the volunteer director or member of several charitable organizations. Abandoned by her two p
arents, Niloufar was responsible for her own life. In this respect, she was very different from other girls her age. Her time, her mind, and her body were free. She could just as easily wear her father’s pants, floating in them, as an extremely short skirt, for every head to turn as she passed. Behavior like that was admissible in Chamkhaleh, but here, in town, it was another story. She was unclassifiable, evolved within boundaries unique to her. So, sometimes they called her a tease, sometimes a tomboy. Some even called her “Monsieur Niloufar.” She seemed to laugh it off. But was she really laughing? I don’t think so. That’s what she wanted people to think. That she not only accepted this role, but delighted in it. Playing the girl who’s not faint-hearted and won’t hesitate to be provocative about any subject. In truth it was nothing but a facade. It secretly pained her to be considered a rich kid, even when she walked around barefoot or dressed like a beggar. She was irremediably the spoiled daughter of her “Doctor daddy.” That’s how it always is. We show what we want to hide the most. She hated her condition, but couldn’t strip herself of it, like a birthmark. Later on, she would pay for all those things very dearly. When the country was handed over to shortsighted monsters from beyond the grave. In the times to come, when she would no longer be protected by her father’s name nor by the great lineage and elegance of her mother, Niloufar would have to accept being what she hated most, what she had fought against her entire life. A spoiled girl, a rich kid, rejected and exiled.
Despite my repeated trips to their home, I could never get used to the splendor of their life. To the logic of their existence. Their house was so big that I continued to discover new nooks at every visit. Each time was like the first time. Like Anahid, the German cousin, I was rediscovering everything. The library full of books. The piano on which Niloufar played songs at her mother’s insistence. The maid who served tea and lemonade without anyone asking for it. Their English garden. Their beautiful car and the chauffeur always available to take them wherever they wanted. I was forever amazed by the finesse of the furniture, the delicacy of the decoration. In the rooms Niloufar moved through with disdain, even disgust, I slowed my pace to drink up the beauty. Niloufar’s mother smelled good, with her long fingers and her perfectly polished nails, while my mother’s hands were ruined by household tasks. My mother and her dress with the loud floral pattern, her flab spilling out along with the odors of our next meal. I couldn’t stop myself from comparing. The Doctor spoke and shared his opinions with confidence, while my father blushed at each phrase and tripped over apologies. The Doctor sat with his chest straight and his legs spread, while my father was always bent over himself, like a crumpled ball of paper. I can still see Niloufar’s mother crossing the great vestibule, then the terrace, in one of her long dresses, à la Greta Garbo, that hugged her svelte body marvelously. Smiling. Watching her, I could never get enough. The more time I spent there, the more I got used to it and the harder it became to return to our “warm little house.” After each trip, my attitude changed a bit more. I was ungracious and contemptuous toward my parents. My mother noticed, but said nothing. She retaliated in her own way. With an excellent stuffed eggplant or another of my favorite dishes. One day she told me that I shouldn’t judge by appearances, that people’s lives aren’t only what we see of them. She was right. She knew things, my mother. I learned later that Niloufar’s parents hated each other and had been violently ripping each other to shreds for years through their lawyers. Not long after Niloufar’s birth, the couple had started sleeping in separate bedrooms. The Doctor had numerous mistresses and was leading a double life. He ate alone in the kitchen, without even sitting down, then shut himself in his bedroom for the night. I didn’t understand the gravity of those things. How can one be unhappy when they have such a luxurious lifestyle? What is certain is that Niloufar and I weren’t in the right places, as if we had been born into the wrong families. Niloufar detested her mother’s social life, hated her coldness and her distance. As for her father, she took for arrogance what I understood as confidence. She hated that enormous house, the over-tended gardens, the chef’s refined dishes. She had been the first to call our house “warm,” an adjective that had been adopted by the others. Now I understood those few extra seconds she lingered in my mother’s arms, nestled against her curves. The joy on her face when she smelled the simple flowers in our garden, climbing and descending our meager stone staircase lacking in symmetry or aesthetics. She even appreciated my father for his modesty and his simplicity, for his honesty, which was, nonetheless, so harmful to our daily life. Yes, decidedly, life makes no sense.
§
The next summer arrived in the order of the seasons, and the fire on the beach was relit like the semaphore of our youth. Parand reappeared with a new motorcycle that was even bigger and shinier than the previous one. The passing of hashish recommenced, as did the bottles of beer in the plastic bucket, the salacious jokes, and the stories about girls. At that age, a year isn’t enough time to grow up.
During the winter, they built the bridge over the river. The village was no longer an enclave, and the tourists from Tehran had started to flock to that part of the coast, until then spared. Their arrival en masse changed the order of things in many ways. The general ambiance, of course, but also the mix of populations. Everything transformed brutally. For us, the hunting ground remained intact, but the number of prey had heightened considerably. It was the general consensus that it was easier to seal the deal with the visiting girls than with those from our region. This view motivated my friends, and consequently everyone thought they had much more bread on their plate.
Around the fire, the stammerer was missing in action, and no one asked about him. Even his aunt’s house, where he had spent his summer vacations, had remained unoccupied that year. For him, the Chamkhaleh chapter was closed. The page had been turned. Our summer festivities picked back up without anyone worrying about the empty spot on the embankment, the disappearance of his lyrical flights in the night. No one, except perhaps Niloufar, who, every morning, threw a fortuitous look in the direction of the hill, where something was missing. Her walks on the beach became more languid, her steps slower. The sounds emanating from the villa dropped a few decibels. All of this was invisible to the eyes of others, and the summer unfolded as if nothing had happened the year before, as if the tragedy of Mohamad-Réza had been nothing but another anecdote written on the ephemeral page of the sand. Was it that, or was everyone pretending they hadn’t noticed? Like a collective guilt that everyone was trying to suppress. But how had Mohamad-Réza been caught? No one knew. No one, apart from me and the Doctor. I had, in fact, revealed Mohamad-Réza’s secret to the Doctor. The time and regularity of his passages, his hiding spot. I had revealed all the useful details to him, praising myself for doing the right thing, but obviously not able to take part openly in the affair. He had taken my word for it. That night, when Mohamad-Réza scaled the wall of the villa, unlike the other nights, he was expected. The Doctor had organized everything without telling his daughter. Did he fear some complicity between Niloufar and Mohamad-Réza? It was very possible. Clubs had been brought in case the intruder resisted. The chauffeur had even brought his cousin as backup, a big burly guy with a reputation for being brutal, someone you don’t want to cross.
I wasn’t far, hidden in a corner like a despicable Judas. I saw everything from my hiding place. I, the architect of misfortune. I heard everything. The strikes, the song he was humming, Niloufar’s sobs. When they took him away, hobbling because of his lowered pants, they passed near me. In the gleam of headlights from the gendarme’s Jeep that had come to grab Mohamad-Réza, I could see his folded body, his swollen face, and especially his eyes. They were empty. There was nothing behind his eyelids. A face without a gaze.
Mohamad-Réza had everything stacked against him. The underwear found in his pocket and sprinkled on the terrace as pieces of evidence, the footprints on the roof of the shed, the sperm stains on the floor and everywhere else. And he endured it al
l. The shattered love, the shame, the face of his beloved, stunned at the window. It was predictable. He acted exactly how I had imagined. The catastrophe had taken place, but it wasn’t pleasant to watch. Mohamad-Réza was henceforth stricken from Niloufar’s life for good, and as a result, from mine. I was convinced of it. I thought I would never again cross paths with him, hear his voice or his stammering, but I was wrong.
So you see, my friend, the domain of evil is far vaster than that of good. Much more complex, much deeper. Evil has more feathers in its cap, infinitely more tricks up its sleeve. You thought you had behaved badly. You cried your shame into my arms for nights on end. What you did doesn’t at all compare to the misfortune I caused. That man you confided in, who you admired for his supposed courage and his legendary resistance, who you wanted to resemble, as you told me a thousand times, was nothing more than a bastard. There we go, that’s better. It’s that look of contempt that I need. Horror, disgust, abomination, spit in my face. Not from just anyone, but from you. If I need to be judged by someone, it’s you. If I have to be thrown outside, let it be by you. Better late than never.
My Part of Her Page 8
