The Courts of Love

by Ellen Gilchrist

  “I couldn’t read his books.” Nora Jane sighed, her old Southern politeness making her cautious. “I think they’re boring and overwritten, or just plain silly. It’s terrible that they want to kill him, but if they’d left him alone no one would have read the books. Well, that’s just my opinion.”

  “I wonder what he thinks of his own writings. I don’t suppose he has much objectivity. Not that any writer has much.”

  “Salman is a line drawn in the sand.” Sebranek spread his hands on his knees. “I’m going to talk about him at a conference of newspaper editors next week. He’s having a hell of a life. They made their point with him, that’s for sure. They have killed two of his translators.”

  “This has made a battlefield of literature,” Adrien added.

  “Free speech is always a battlefield. Always was, always will be. I wish Freddy was here. I want to talk to him about this while I have it on my mind.”

  “What do you do, Nora Jane?” Adrien asked. “Do you help Freddy with the store?”

  “I’ve gone back to school to get a degree. I was going to study sociology but I think I’ll go on and be in the music department instead. My grandmother was a diva. I took lessons when I was young from a man in New Orleans who was really good. I just never have liked to sing in public. So I decided it was all right to go on and study it for myself. Anyway, I just found out I’m pregnant, so that changes things. We didn’t plan it. I guess you think we’re crazy, having children in this crowded world. Anyway, we’re having it.”

  “No one should be without their art.” Adrien reached over and touched Nora Jane’s hand. “Being pregnant shouldn’t interfere with music in any way. It might make your voice better. I have a friend in San Francisco who is one of the greatest teachers in the world. She taught Kathleen Battle. She lives out here because she makes money coaching people for the movies. Delaney Hawk is her name. Have you heard of her? If you could pay her, she would teach you.”

  “God, yes. Everyone knows about her.”

  “Your speaking voice is lovely. I can imagine how well you might sing. I was telling Sebranek a while ago that your voice was wonderful, wasn’t I, my darling?”

  “She was indeed. She’s mad for accents and voices.”

  “I’d love to meet Mrs. Hawk. Would you take me there?”

  “We’ll go tomorrow. I need to see her myself. I’ll call her this afternoon.”

  The maître d’ came to take them to a table. As they were being seated, Freddy joined them, carrying more books for Adrien to sign and a box wrapped in white satin paper and tied with a velvet ribbon. “We found these books in my office. I forgot to give them to Frances. Would you mind signing five more for us?” He handed the books to Adrien, then pulled out a chair next to Nora Jane and handed her the package.

  “You just didn’t want to wait for a table.” She took the package and laid it beside her napkin. “What is this? Where did you get a present for me so fast?”

  “It was for your birthday. Now it’s for the baby. Please open it.”

  She removed the ribbon and the paper. Inside was a velvet case. Inside the case was a diamond bracelet. Twenty small perfect diamonds in gold links. “Oh, my God,” she said. “Freddy, take this back. I don’t have any use for this. Where would I wear something like this?”

  “They were Grandmother’s. All I paid for was the setting. If you don’t want it, save it for the girls.”

  “Of course she wants it.” Adrien picked up the bracelet and held it out. “Let me put it on your arm. Diamonds and babies, a cause for celebration. Order some wine, Sebranek. It’s a finite world. Let’s celebrate this day.”

  Sebranek signaled a waiter. “I wish Johnnie could have stayed to be with us. He looked fine, didn’t you think so? His mother is the passive-aggressive resentment queen of the East Coast,” he said to Freddy. “It’s driven him to extremes.”

  “Good wombs have borne bad sons, and vice versa.” Adrien touched his arm.

  “Don’t say that in front of me.” Nora Jane laughed. “What if I was carrying a bad one.”

  “Johnnie isn’t bad,” Sebranek said. “He’s just confused and can’t decide what to do with his life. I don’t know what he’s doing for a living. I guess his mother sends him money. He’s always been able to manipulate her. Well, what can I do but love him and wait?”

  “You can’t fix their lives for them. I wrote a piece for Elle last year about parenting grown children. I learned something from writing it. I had a great mother. She liked being a mother and she was healthy and protective. A psychiatrist told me a lovely thing. She said a great mother produces an irrational sense of security in a child. I’m irrationally secure. That’s why I can do such an insecure thing for a living. Once I wrote three mediocre, almost bad, books in a row and still I kept on believing I was a good writer.”

  “They weren’t bad.” Sebranek laughed. “I liked them enough to publish them, before I fell in love with her.”

  “You were probably always in love with her,” Freddy added, and they all laughed at that. “I was in love with her for weeks when I read Dark Winter.”

  Nora Jane was quiet, thinking of her own drunken mother, her lonely nights, her dirty house. Nothing like that will ever happen to my children, she thought grimly. I guess I better quit school. I can’t do that with this baby coming. I can read books. I don’t have to go to college to be happy.

  “Nora Jane is the best mother in the world,” Freddy said. “She’s stood in there and learned and been firm and sweet at the same time. If I’d had her I’d probably be the president by now. Our girls aren’t perfect but they do well in school and they’re happy, I think.”

  “They’re ten years old,” Nora Jane added. “They are so funny. They like being twins but then they have spells of not wanting anyone to know it. Lydia is the one who likes the twin thing. Tammili, who is like Freddy, is always straining against it. They’re wonderful to have. We like them a lot.”

  The waiter brought wine and food. They ate and drank. The conversation moved on to lighter subjects. When they parted, Adrien and Nora Jane made plans to go the next afternoon to pay a call on Delaney Hawk. “You will profit from knowing her whether she accepts you as a student or not,” Adrien said. “She adores money and probably won’t be able to turn down a student who is sure to pay. I have a premonition about your meeting her. Something portentous in the wind.”

  “You aren’t coming to dinner tonight?” Freddy asked. “My friend Nieman is dying to meet you.”

  “I promised her the ballet,” Sebranek answered. “I do anything for my authors, didn’t you know?”

  II

  The Muslim fundamentalist sect to which Navin Backer belonged was not closely aligned with the group that blew up the World Trade Center but it was sympathetic to it. The old sheikh who was standing trial in New York City was a sentimental favorite with the young men who came each day to the house on Telegraph Avenue and sat around drinking coffee, watching television and reading Iraqi newspapers brought in on the daily planes from Paris and Madrid. The papers were brought in by a service that also supplied them with money and explosive devices.

  Navin was in a dark mood. His number two wife was sulky and after three years had not produced a child and his number one wife had become so fat she no longer interested him. He wanted to go home to Baghdad and get new wives and walk along streets where men and women did not view him with disdain. He had been in a dark mood all spring. Now his mood had turned vicious.

  “He needs something to do to take his mind off his wives,” his mentor, Amir Haven, told his second in command. “We must send him to blow up an airplane or a boat. Is there nothing for young Navin to make him bloom?”

  Both men laughed. “Why not two airplanes, perhaps the whole airport, anything to get his mind off women,” the second in command jokingly suggested.

  “Here is an interesting thing in the newspaper. This Sebranek Conrad. Isn’t he on the list? I’ve heard him mentioned.
Is he the one who is going to publish the books of the whore?”

  “Let me see.” Amir took up the paper and read the short piece in the Book Talk section. Then he went to his desk and rummaged through his papers and found the name. “What is the bookstore named?”

  “Clara.”

  “We bombed it ten years ago when the heretic published the book he hasn’t been punished for yet. Yes, that might interest Navin. We could send him to demonstrate or throw a brick through the window. Something useful but not too daring. Dangerous but not important enough to call attention to us at this time. Bring him in here. Let me talk to him.”

  Amir sat back in his chair. He had no interest in taking foolish chances, but still, this might be useful in several ways. He considered the idea. A book publisher was not high profile with the general public but it scared an influential group. It was always difficult to decide who to target. A hit should send out waves, like a pebble dropped into a pond. It should be unexpected, fresh, but with the message clear. This might do to remind people they were there, that men of God would not tolerate the insults the godless heaped upon them. Also, it would keep the young men busy. Their lives were not good in the United States. They were spat upon in the eyes of the women. He had felt it himself. Felt his sexual organs shrink at their piggish soft-faced looks, their contemptuous gazes. The community was not organized. They were spread around the city, some in disguise as teachers and Christians, others working at menial jobs. The women were affected also. At first they were frightened by the supermarkets and automobiles, then you could almost hear it happening, as their curiosity began to overpower their modesty and training. This was all a bad thing, this being in America, even if it did ensure a heavenly reward. But I do not always believe that Allah cares, Amir thought. I am not sure Allah exists in this land. Perhaps he cannot see through the smoke that drifts above their houses. Perhaps he is too offended by their ways to turn his head in this direction. Allah be praised. Forgive a humble servant.

  Navin came into the room and made obeisance. Then he stood against the wall. Navin didn’t like to sit in chairs. Even in America he liked to pretend he was on the desert. He confronted the universe at every moment. He imagined wind and sand in his face.

  “I think we will remind them that we are watching,” Amir said, spreading the newspaper out on the desk. Pointing to the article. “All the Jews are not in Israel.”

  “As Allah knows.”

  “Would you like to be the messenger?”

  “If I am needed. The list of enemies is long.”

  “For now we will not make it shorter but we will frighten them perhaps. Would you like to leave a message for this man?” Navin moved across the room, looked down at the newspaper. “A small explosion in a bookstore window perhaps,” Amir continued. “A hotel room in disarray. What do you see happening?”

  “Give me a driver. I will disturb their peace before they leave the city.”

  “Allah is pleased.”

  “Allah is Allah. I am unworthy to say his name.”

  After lunch Freddy went back to the store and Nora Jane returned home and sat on the steps waiting for the twins. She was trying to decide how to tell them about the baby. She stretched her legs out in front of her. The sun beat down and bounced off the stone and warmed and soothed her. They are so different, she was thinking, remembering the girls leaving for school that morning, dressed as though they were continents apart. Lydia in tomboy clothes and tennis shoes, Tammili in a serious jumper and starched white blouse.

  A station wagon pulled into the driveway and the girls got out. Lydia dragging a pink backpack behind her. Tammili with her pack sitting squarely on her shoulders.

  “I’m going to meet a singing teacher tomorrow,” Nora Jane said, when they were near enough to hear.

  “Then you’ll go on the stage and we’ll never see you again.” Lydia abandoned her backpack altogether and went to her mother and cuddled up beside her on the stairs.

  “That’s good,” Tammili said. “That’s good, Mother. That would be good for you.”

  “What did you do in school?”

  “We had a Spanish festival with this stupid piñata. I’m about sick of this multicultural stuff. Miss Armand had on this long skirt. All we do is waste time. I’ll never get into Harvard going to Country Day. If you don’t get me in a better school, I’m going to quit and just stay home.”

  “She asked Miss Armand if she could go to the library while they had the festival.” Lydia looked at her mother and raised her eyes as if to say, Only you and I know what this means.

  “And did they let you, Tammili?”

  “Part of the time they did. They made me stay for the songs. But at least I didn’t have to waste my time on the stupid piñata. I’m going to tell Uncle Nieman about it. He thinks it’s hilarious the stuff they do.” Tammili carefully removed her backpack and got out three papers with A’s on them and handed them over. “I got the highest grade in the class in math.”

  “You always do,” Lydia added. “So what?”

  Uncle Nieman was their godfather, and he took his godfathering seriously. He saw them at least twice a week, to check, he said, on their spiritual progress, by which he meant what they were reading and what movies they were seeing. He had given them leather-bound editions of the Harvard Classics for their eighth birthday and also kept them supplied with videos he thought suitable. Not only did he buy them books and films, he lectured them on the things he bought. At the moment they were studying Green Mansions, which he read aloud to them when he came to dinner on Friday nights.

  When the girls had eaten a snack and gone off on their bikes, Nora Jane went into the music room and opened the piano and began to play. She lifted her head and began to practice scales. Her voice had lost nothing in the years she had ignored it. If anything it was even sweeter and clearer, with a range that was almost unearthly at times. Since she had never strained it or challenged it, it was still a young voice, as natural and beautiful as a bird’s song. It was the one thing she had always kept to herself. She had never let anyone persuade her to use her voice for anything except the joy of singing when she felt like singing. My voice is not for sale, she had always said to herself, even in the darkest moments of her life. It’s my voice and no one can hear it unless I want them to.

  Now, suddenly, at age thirty, Nora Jane was getting excited about meeting this teacher. I might really be excited about the baby, she tried to tell herself, but she knew it wasn’t so. No, the baby is just there. This is because the great feminist writer Adrien Searle is coming to get me and take me to meet Delaney Hawk. Maybe I’ll audition for her. Maybe she knew about Grandmother. I bet she knew of her.

  What if I really started singing, she was thinking. I would have a concert one day and Freddy and Lydia and Tammili would come and be surprised. They’d say, I don’t believe that’s our mother.

  Navin dressed in blue jeans and a white shirt. He put on a baseball cap to hide his black curls and then added a tweed jacket someone had found for him in a secondhand clothing store. He changed into the new basketball shoes. He put on his flesh-colored gloves. He picked up a knife and held it for a second, then slipped it into his jacket pocket. A small revolver was already taped to his ribs. The marble-sized smoke bombs and explosive devices were in his sleeves. “I will leave the message in the hotel room,” he had told Amir. “The closer to home, the more it frightens them.” The knife is for the clothes, he told himself, looking into the mirror. Unless better meat presents itself. Amir is too cautious. He has become soft from his time here. He thinks they have power to stop us. He is a bad leader. Then I must lead myself, with Allah’s blessing. I must assure my path to heaven, or else perhaps I will be sent home soon. It is in your hands, blessed one, guide me. I am a faithful servant if you show the way.

  He went outside and waited for the car to pull up to the curb. A young man named Ali Fava was in the driver’s seat. They embraced, then sat back and were quiet. Ali Fava drove him t
o the Paris Hotel. He got out of the car and went into the hotel through the adjoining coffee shop. He nodded to the man at the desk but did not stop to speak. He got into the elevator and went up to the second floor and found the door to the room and disabled the latch with a wire and let himself into the double room. It was all so quick, so perfect, that if Sebranek and Adrien had been standing by the door they would not have heard it or been able to stop it.

  Adrien was in the bathroom. She was dressed and was putting on powder and lipstick. She had meant to spend a long time on her makeup but had been caught up on the phone with an editor at Harper’s Bazaar and thought she was running out of time. She wanted to talk to Delaney once more before she brought Nora Jane out there. She wanted to stress the importance of not scaring the young woman. Delaney sometimes terrified the young. “She’s a special young woman, I will say. From a wealthy and powerful family. Even you need connections, Delaney. So give her a chance. For the sake of our friendship. I’ve never asked a favor of you, have I?” Adrien practiced the speech, then chided herself for preparing a speech to give to a friend. “Nonsense,” she concluded. “I’ll just tell her what I want.”

  She heard the door close. “Sebranek?” she called over her shoulder, still looking in the mirror. “What are you doing back here?” She saw in the mirror the reflection of Navin’s face. Like a terrible dream, the beard, the eyes, the knife. Then he was directly behind her and grabbed her head and held her. He stuck the knife into her breast three times. Then he slashed her throat. He was very fastidious and did not like to be bloodied. He let the body drop, then stepped gingerly over her and went to the tub to wash the blood off his gloves. He used a towel to clean his shoes.

  He went back into the room and found a plastic bag in a trash can and stuffed the towel into it. He let himself out of the room. He took off the gloves and added them to the bag. Then he went down the back stairs and out onto the patio and through a gate and found Ali Fava waiting with the motor running. He got into the car and threw the bag in the backseat. “Go to the coffeehouse on the corner,” he said. “The Peet’s. I want to get a pound of coffee. Do as I say. Drive slowly. Roll the windows down. There is no hurry. There is nothing to fear.”