by André Aciman
When she heard that he owned a motorcycle, and that he ran errands in Ibrahimieh every morning, I saw my grandmother give a start and say “Achhh, Kyrio Costa—” and beg him to bring the boy to her house every other morning. The man consented easily.
“Kyrio Costa, your soul is blessed in heaven.”
He blushed.
“No, madame,” he said seriously, “Costa has done many bad things in this life, and for some, madame, you don’t even know their name. Costa will pay.”
Thus every other morning, Monsieur Costa would arrive with the loudest motorcycle in the world. He would whistle with both fingers in his mouth, and as soon as I was saddled on his backseat, would order me to hold him tight by the waist and off we went, roaring through Sidi-Gaber, past Cleopatra, then Grand Sporting, racing with the tram, beating the tram, leaving the tram behind us, finally reaching Petit Sporting, and slowing down toward Ibrahimieh, all of it in a matter of minutes as he kept taking sharp and ever more intricate turns, veering left then right—growling “Hold tight, pedimou”—and leaning the bike as low as he could, his boot grazing the asphalt, always congratulating himself with “What reflexes, Costa, what reflexes!” speeding all the way out to Camp de César, almost to Chatby, and then turning back again toward Ibrahimieh—“for the fun of it”—and slowing the vehicle to the equivalent of a regal canter down Rue Memphis, finally depositing me in front of my grandmother’s house, where she waited for me with a piece of fresh fruit already peeled and ready to be eaten as soon as I hopped off the motorcycle.
An hour into my visit, my grandmother would never fail to observe that I already looked much better. “Look, he’s laughing,” she would tell her husband as we sat around a table in the garden. “Isn’t it true that he only laughs when he’s with me?”
“Come, we’ll take a walk around the garden,” my grandfather would say, always eager to be away from his wife, taking me into the arbor where birds sang and where the air was thick with the parched, dry, cloying scent of rosemary and sweet, overgrown rhododendron. Away from my grandmother’s gaze, he would finally reach into his pocket and produce a present: a keychain, or a pen, or a penknife—our secret, he’d say, for she always disapproved of the things he gave me, claiming they were dangerous or unseemly. “Soon I’ll have to teach you billiards,” he said one day, producing three smooth ivory balls from his striped bathrobe pocket. Then, using his cane and a billiard cue, we would pluck guavas from one of the orchard trees.
At around half past ten, my grandmother and I would hire a carriage and ride all the way to Stanley Beach, where her siblings and her mother had a summer cabin. Sitting next to her in the carriage, I would make out the wholesome, soothing fragrance of Madame Anèle’s almond creams, tea rose ointments, and cucumber lotions—all three forever laced into the memory of those sunny mornings. Sometimes we took the tram at Ibrahimieh, stopped at Rouchdy, and only then hired a carriage. The carriage would struggle uphill along a quiet, tree-lined avenue, taking forever to reach the top, as my grandmother went on with her chilling tales of the Armenian massacre and of the Armenian priest whose hand was cut off as he struggled against three janissaries who then lopped off his head along with that of a grocer who had come to the old man’s rescue—when, suddenly, without warning, greeted by the rising clamor coming from the beaches, we knew we had reached the top of the hill and there, shimmering right before us in a dazzling expanse of turquoise and aquamarine, was the sea, extending from as far back as Glymenopoulos to the mighty fortress of Kait Bey.
“Ah, but the water is wonderful today,” she would exclaim, tapping my thigh with excitement, for until coming face-to-face with the sea, you never really knew whether the water was going to be rough or quiet.
The cabins at Stanley were located on three tiers of boardwalks; each had its own porch, or vestibule, resembling more an opera loge than a changing area, and was separated from adjacent porches by lateral cloth dividers, while overhead, a long white awning fastened to the parapet along the common boardwalk was always fluttering, so that on crowded, sunny days, all three boardwalks were almost entirely hidden from view, beaming white in the sunlight, squeaking and fluttering like sails on a Spanish galleon.
At the beach, my great-aunts were persuaded they still lived in fin-de-siècle Alexandria, far from the world of Smouha, of querulous maids and crippled manservants. The women never put on bathing suits but wore white or cream-colored short-sleeve linen or cotton voile dresses with plenty of lace, and large, ornate hats, which they held in place with their hands whenever a breeze came up. On the beach, all four sisters, their mother, friends, and Madame Victoria Coutzeris, whose villa overlooked the bay itself, would sit on multicolored, striped folding chairs, forever repeating how important it was to avoid the sun, their swollen feet crammed into tight shoes, and each heaving a happy sigh whenever the wind stirred the large, striped umbrella. Every morning, the lifeguards would put up their umbrella in their favorite spot some distance from the water. Some of these lifeguards knew how to fasten awnings particularly well and were highly regarded, with the sort of reverence the landed gentry will extend to an otherwise insignificant gatekeeper who happens to have a special talent for trapping rodents. Others, however, were not so skillful and were shooed away as soon as they offered to help.
I was never allowed to drink or eat anything, certainly not Coca-Cola or those hazelnut biscuits sold by grubby vendors along the sand. My grandmother always insisted that nothing agreed with the sea more than fruit, and plenty of it, which is why she brought a thermos filled with lemonade. To my great joy, however, I found out that ice cream could be had simply by sneaking up one flight of stairs to the upper deck, where Aunt Flora had her cabin. There I would usually find her reading in her reclining beach chair, ask her for ice cream, and return, rather pleased with myself, to confront my angry grandmother, who stood waiting, like God after Adam had eaten the forbidden fruit.
Once, by chance, I found Aunt Flora sitting quietly next to another woman whom I did not immediately recognize, although she seemed quite interested in me. The surprise and sudden joy were such that I immediately forgot everything that had stood between us that day—Monsieur Costa, my grandfather, the dizzying rides through the nameless side alleys of Alexandria, the Armenian massacre, the billiard balls, even my grandmother’s joyful tap on my thigh as soon as we had sighted Stanley that day—everything vanished when I heard the woman’s voice. Minutes later, she reminded me that my clothes were still downstairs in my great-grandmother’s cabin and that we would have to tell them I was going home with her instead.
My mother waited for me to finish my ice cream, then took me by the hand, went downstairs to greet her in-laws, and, with a tone of voice that admitted no discussion, said she was taking me home.
“But I had planned to take him to visit Albert at the billiard hall. We always stop there, don’t we?” the Princess asked, trying to enlist my help.
I nodded.
“No, he’s coming with me,” said my mother.
I thanked my good fortune that my mother had spared me yet another confrontation. But when my grandmother was drying me off before dressing me in clean clothes, the silence between us was intolerable. I wished I had not been so visibly eager to leave her, for the old lady seemed on the verge of tears, and as she bent down to buckle my sandals, which must have been difficult for her, I knew that, given the chance to do it again, I would have forfeited the mango ice cream altogether and not run into my mother. I kissed her on the cheek, saying something I seldom said to her. I told her I loved her. But I said it in Arabic.
On our way home, my mother hailed a carriage along the Corniche, and Flora and I got in. “No, wait,” she told us, and with hand signals and her poor knowledge of Arabic asked the man how much he would charge to take us to Rue Memphis. “Too much, the man’s a thief, come down,” she ordered, whereupon both Flora and I went through the motions of getting off. The man relented, which meant that the haggling was about to co
mmence, and soon she was raising her voice. Then she began to shriek, which we knew would subdue him. People were looking in our direction. And suddenly I understood, as I watched her gesture the price she was not going to budge from, that she was yelling not because the driver was being too stubborn—everyone knew he would relent in the end—nor even because she was exploding with the rage she had had to suppress in seeing how her role as mother was being so cunningly undermined by my grandmother. She was screaming because she already knew that with a few oblique hints of outrage whispered in my father’s ear later that day, my grandmother would succeed in painting her as spiteful and vindictive toward a benevolent old woman whose sole wish in life was to devote the few years left her to grooming the son of an overly suspicious Arab Jewish ingrate. She would never be able to counter such allegations—for to do so she would have to crawl under and around her mother-in-law’s verbal barbed wire. And this, Madame Tsotsou’s old pupil had not been taught to do. She could sniff out guile with the cunning of a fox, but she could not avoid the snares of sophistry. Arguments turned against her, because she knew how to shout, not how to argue, because, in the kingdom of words, she would always remain a stranger. Hers was the frustration which an innocent man feels when confronted by a gifted prosecutor.
To placate his mother, my father personally took me to his parents’the next morning. But to satisfy my mother, he decided perhaps we didn’t have to go to the beach. Instead, he suggested that he, his father, and I go to buy shoes at a closeout sale. We drove along the Corniche on this clear summer day, parked the car near the Cecil Hotel, and walked toward Boulevard Saad Zaghloul. We stopped to take in the view and listen to the sound of the water licking the huge, ugly boulders lining the city’s waterfront. And there we were, the three of us, before the parapet, looking over beyond the bay, beyond the seawall, past the fortress of Kait Bey, where the water was always rough and dark by the ruins of the fallen lighthouse. There was a pause in the conversation.
“You know,” said my grandfather, turning to my father, “I don’t think I need new shoes.”
My father said nothing at first.
“But you know how difficult it is to find good English shoes nowadays. Do you mean to walk in worn down moccasins for the rest of your life?”
All this was said as both stared out into the shimmering morning sea.
“I don’t know.” And as though he hadn’t been paying attention to his son and was merely following his own train of thought, he added, “All this sky and all this water—what do you do with so much blue once you’ve seen it?”
Then, catching himself, he asked, “Don’t you have plenty of shoes already?”
“Yes, but when I wear them out, can you see me wearing flimsy made-in-Egypt shoes?”
We proceeded to walk along the Corniche toward the Boulevard.
“Walk faster,” said my father to his father.
“But I’m walking fast.”
“No, you’re walking sluggishly. You should walk briskly, energetically. Like this.” And suddenly my father began to outpace us. Seeing that he had walked far ahead, he came back at the same pace.
“See, it’s good for you,” continued my father, saying something about Monsieur Politi, his gymnastics instructor who came every morning at six.
“Like this?” mimicked his father.
“Somewhat. Move your arms as well, and breathe deeply.”
“Like this?”
“Yes.”
“And by doing this, I’m to live how many more years? Enough to outlive your mother? Thank you for the demonstration. But I’ll walk the way I’ve always walked.”
My father changed his mind about the shoes. “Perhaps we don’t need ready-made shoes after all,” he said, implying that he was rich enough to afford custom-made ones. Instead, he suggested coffee at an establishment overlooking the bay. “I’ve had an excellent year. Things are going very well. I’m even building an annex to warehouse more goods. So I can afford a cup of coffee at La Côte.”
“I don’t understand,” said my grandfather, as though talking to himself. “One day he’s the impoverished son of a pool hall owner, and the next he’s splurging on the best cars, best clothes, best this, best that. This can’t go on. You’re only doing well because all the other large textile manufacturers have sold their businesses and moved back to England. It doesn’t bode well. You should be saving more,” added my grandfather.
“Both you and Gigi have only one thing in mind: save, save, save.”
Meanwhile, we had reached La Côte and my father opened the heavy glass door, letting both of us in ahead of him. The place was crowded but almost silent.
The waiter, who recognized my father immediately, knew that he liked a table next to the window.
“You shouldn’t be spending your money so frivolously. I’m not the first to say it.” My grandfather was looking out the window. “The entire city knows. There are even rumors about other things as well, if you follow my drift.”
“Your drift sticks out a mile.”
My father picked up a cigarette, let it rest between his fingers as though trying to remember whether he hadn’t already just smoked one, then, staring at it still, seemed to change his mind. “You were hardly any better yourself,” he added.
“It’s easy to accuse me. But I was married to a witch.”
A waiter wearing a turban and traditional Egyptian garb poured coffee for the two men, while another, a Greek, brought me a large ice cream soda.
The old man sighed. He looked at the table next to ours, where two women were drinking tea.
“Look, don’t think I don’t know these things. We are all like that, us men, and I’ve known it about myself ever since the day I became a man, more than half a century ago.”
“But—” the son began to protest.
“Just promise me this,” added my grandfather. “As long as I’m alive, be good to her, and no more women.”
The son swore.
“And when you’re gone?” he asked, trying to liven the mood.
“When I’m gone, I’ll be gone, and what you do will be your business.”
The waiter brought two large glasses of water and a tiny slice of Turkish delight.
“You know you shouldn’t eat sweets,” said my father. “My doctor—”
“My doctor, my trainer, my walking, my breathing—please!” interrupted his father. “Coffee, cigarettes, and sweets. I’m not even seventy, yet these are the two or three pleasures left me.” He sipped the coffee, holding his demitasse and saucer in the same hand. “There,” he interjected. He had already given me a piece of the Turkish delight and was already cutting me another.
My father, who was sitting across from us, had put down his demitasse and was staring at us in silence, as though not wishing to break the spell.
My grandfather cut me yet another piece and watched as I put it in my mouth, almost purposely avoiding his son’s gaze.
“And what are you staring at?” he finally asked.
“I’m looking at you.”
“He’s looking at me,” mused the older man, as though there were something terrifically moving about staring at one’s own father—which I suddenly realized there was.
A few minutes later I caught sight of my mother, Aunt Flora, and my two grandmothers standing at the doorway of La Cote.
“What a surprise—and Flora as well!” exclaimed my father, as soon as the women were escorted to our table.
“Dr. Katz said she is perfectly healthy,” reported the Princess, who had run into the three women that morning at the tramway station and, on impulse, had decided to join them. “The gallstones are far better, she’s got the liver of an ox—”
My grandfather muttered something to his son.
A breeze fanned our faces as we ordered another round of coffee.
“A day meant for the beach,” said Flora with that joyful, expansive air her voice acquired whenever she spoke of the sea. “Why isn’t the boy at the
beach today?”
“It’s about time he spent time with grown-up men,” explained my grandfather, offering her a cigarette from his cigarette case.
Flora, who hadn’t seen my grandfather in a while, asked him how he was.
“I’m getting older,” he said. “I stay home a lot. I’m bored when I stay home, I’m bored when I go out. Voilà. And I sleep a lot,” he added, as though he had forgotten a significant detail. “When it’ll be time for me to show my face above, I’ll walk up to Saint Peter and say, ‘Excuse me, Holy Father, but I’ve slept so much these past few weeks that I couldn’t possibly sleep any more. Perhaps I could come back in a few weeks.’”
Flora laughed heartily, repeating my grandfather’s last words several times, indeed, never forgetting them.
“Ah, Flora, I’m so happy to see you.”
“And I’m glad to see you, because, frankly, I needed to smoke one of your cigarettes.”
“Ah, Flora, if all women were like you—if you only knew.”
“What’s with him today?” asked Flora, turning to my father.
“I don’t know,” answered my father. “He’s been like this all morning.”
“Your grandfather is a wonderful man,” she said, “but he can be more malheureux than earthquake victims.”
Soon everyone decided it was time to break for lunch. My mother and Aunt Flora had planned to have lunch at the Saint’s. My father invited my grandfather for lunch. The Princess, not daring to say anything, just looked at me.
“Can you take him to lunch at Rue Thèbes today?” my mother asked, turning to the Princess. My mother explained she was busy that afternoon. First, the tailor was due to arrive to measure her for a dress for the centennial. And Aziza was going to “do” her halawa.
“Stay with her,” whispered my mother, indicating the Princess.
My grandmother’s face suddenly beamed like a sunny day in June.
My father knew it as soon as he picked up the receiver that same night and heard the flustered, officious tremor in the Saint’s voice. She kept trying to convey the news obliquely, with a notion of dignity and fortitude. His mother, she said, was sitting right in front of her, crying. She was drinking a fortifiant, the Saint’s euphemism for schnapps. Then, while trying to comfort my father—yet also hint at the forthcoming ball, to which she had still not been invited—she reminded him that not everyone was meant to live to be a hundred.