A Marriage in Four Seasons

by Kathryn Abdul-baki

  What should have been a springboard to a love for international travel, however, seemed to have had the opposite effect on him, as if he’d never truly been to those foreign places. He now seemed willing to stray only so far off the beaten track, and halfheartedly at that, as if he were more comfortable in a limited world. It was becoming all too clear that any initiative to explore on this trip would be up to her.

  She gazed at his face again, at his lips that, in their relaxed state, seemed perfectly drawn by an artist’s pen. The first time they’d kissed, she’d been getting over those other lips that had never rushed but only slowly and sensuously teased. The insistence of Richard’s kisses had at first felt too desperate, and she couldn’t help but compare them to those that still haunted her. Yet his ardor had also left her no time to sink into old memories, and it hadn’t taken long for him to spark her wounded flame, spurring her to fall in love again.

  She jiggled the bed once more. Richard rolled onto his side, oblivious.

  “So much for trying to impress me, mi amor,” she whispered, thinking of those romantic words of Spanish he’d uttered earlier.

  She got up from the bed, picked up Richard’s camera, and quietly fled the room. Outside, she headed for the outdoor iron staircase where she’d earlier seen a sign pointing to a rooftop swimming pool.

  On the rooftop deck, there was indeed a small pool sitting derelict and abandoned. The surface of the foggy water rippled lightly in the breeze, and the concrete around one edge was broken at a jagged angle.

  She glanced about. There were still no signs of the Alhambra, even from this higher vantage. No ruddy towers or airy terraces, no white pavilions nestled in the groves and vineyards where the Moors were said to have enjoyed the sumptuous fruits of their gardens. Instead of the legendary slopes of lush prickly pear and wild olive that Irving had described, she saw only adjoining old roofs of dull-red tile or flat concrete. The sole signs of life were the rooftop clotheslines of men’s drying white briefs and undershirts flapping to the rattle of air-conditioners.

  Then, once her gaze settled, something else caught her eye.

  From across several other flat roofs cluttered with household detritus peeked a pink-and-turquoise stucco mansion. A little farther off, an old building gleamed like a painted vase, its tawny walls ornamented with intricate Gothic stonework. A sliver of arabesque tile glinted from a half-open doorway below, revealing a colonnaded courtyard—undeniable evidence of the eight hundred years of Moorish presence.

  She closed her eyes and listened. Even the breeze here above the cobbled streets seemed to carry a faint wail, an echo of the long-lost lamentations of the vanquished Moors.

  Crossing from one corner of the roof to the other, she stepped around the decaying pool to snap shots of red tile and curling, wrought-iron balconies, swirling baroque plasterwork above doorways, and windows with looping trim like women’s hair tresses. She shot the buildings from different angles, grabbing the late afternoon’s waning light.

  Renewed optimism flooded her. Her earlier impatience with Richard had been silly. The reality before her now had its own delicate charm. They were in the right place, lackluster room or not. Richard was right. They weren’t going to spend much time inside. She’d ignore the mediocre furnishings and focus on this amazing city, on the architecture and restaurants and history.

  Brimming with discovery, she hurried back down the steps, eager to express her gratitude to Richard for bringing her to this magnificent place. But she found him still asleep, sprawled in bed like an exhausted child, firmly clutching the television remote.

  She glanced at her watch. It was too late to sightsee.

  She slipped off her shoes and lay on the bed, thinking they could settle for a romantic dinner out. But her earlier enthusiasm on the roof started to dim as the familiar ache began to grow in her again, as on those nights when she awoke terrified from nightmares of being in labor.

  2

  The piercing aroma of fresh coffee tugged her from her dreams. She opened her eyes and eyed the saucers of cheese, ham, bread rolls, and maroon figs. Richard had ordered up breakfast as if he knew just the sort of meal Washington Irving wrote of starting his day with in Granada. Joy smiled, ravenous, her misgivings of yesterday all but evaporating in the pungent stream of coffee he was pouring into a porcelain cup.

  They ate sitting in bed, Richard flipping the television channel from CNN to a local English channel that was predicting heavy traffic on the highways due to an international golf tournament in Seville.

  “Good thing we drove in yesterday,” he said.

  “You bet,” she said with a chuckle, thinking of his intolerance for traffic of any kind. Tournament-induced traffic would have done him in.

  Feeling renewed after the meal, she showered and dressed. Then, packing cameras and guidebooks, they set off for the Alhambra.

  Map in hand as usual, Richard led them up a narrow street where bars with lunching customers and shops selling all manner of colorful handicrafts, T-shirts, guitars, and ruffled flamenco dresses had obviously replaced a once-verdant hillside. Legend had it that King Ferdinand and his pregnant Isabella had camped in this valley below the Alhambra castle walls while their Catholic army laid siege to the inhabitants of the last Moorish stronghold above.

  Arriving at an ancient stone gateway with a large sign for the Alhambra above it, Joy and Richard proceeded up a wide, dirt road flanked on either side by babbling water channels reputed to be remnants of the ingenious Moorish irrigation and drainage system. The hill was somewhat steep, and she took his hand as they climbed. Farther up the hill, the renowned elm groves appeared, and finally, the towering red walls of the fortress itself.

  The woman in the entrance booth, however, informed them that the next tour of the palace wasn’t for another two hours. She told them to check out the gardens while they waited and turned to the next person in line.

  More delays? Joy thought. But once in the manicured terraces and leafy promenades, she was glad for this interval. The bustle of the town below had abruptly given way to a lyrical quiet, and the clear air of the wooded hills was moist and cool. Water trickled through open earthen pipes from upper springs into lower gardens as fountains sprayed iridescent rainbows in a line down the center of a flowered courtyard. Scarlet and yellow rosebushes bloomed in spirals, while archways of red bougainvillea formed a stately, beckoning colonnade. In the distance above it all glistened the snow-capped cliffs of the Sierra Nevada.

  “Amazing,” Joy said, breathing in with deep satisfaction.

  “Yeah,” Richard said, removing the cap on his camera lens to take a picture.

  Joy gazed around at the colorful splendor. This is what they’d come for, what the Moors had allegedly designed these gardens for—a total submersion in beauty so tranquil that a moment in a perfumed garden could last an eternity. Irving himself had declared in wonder, “Who can do justice to a moonlit night in such a climate and in such a place!”

  She felt a swell of relief. How could she not believe that all their struggles as a couple who had lost a child, even before they were allowed to know him, would eventually yield fruitful results?

  They exited the gardens into a large, paved yard where others waiting to see the palace were gathered around a refreshment kiosk. Richard bought two bottles of chilled Alhambra Reserva, and they sat on the stone steps in the shade of the fortress, sipping the lager.

  A few minutes later, Richard laid his head on her shoulder and yawned. “God, I’m tired.”

  “Rich, it’s the Alhambra,” she said, sensing his usual impatience with waiting for anything.

  “Well, let’s try to get in now.”

  He stood and stretched and started to wander toward the palace, beckoning for her to follow. The line to get in was long and the guards appeared to be checking passes.

  “It’s not time yet,” she said. “They may stop us.”

  Even as she hurried to catch up, however, she sensed that Richard had gro
wn uneasy. She guessed at the reason when she spotted the brightly dressed women weaving through the tourists and handing out sprigs of thyme and pink carnations in return for a tip. Gypsies.

  Joy had long been fascinated by gypsies, by their ancient roots in India, and especially by those of Granada and their creation of flamenco. Richard, however, had warned her about their reputation as swindlers and asked that she not speak to any who might approach them.

  A ruddy-faced young woman in a flowery dress now walked up to Joy and gamely pressed her arm, indicating that she wanted to read her palm. Joy shook her head, looking around for Richard. But when she noticed the small head of black hair poking out of the bundle the young woman was cradling, she changed her mind. What could be the harm? She reached into her purse for some money to help the young mother. If nothing else, maybe the colorful soothsayer could predict a pregnancy in her future.

  Before she could hand the young woman the change, however, a shrill curse pierced the air. Another woman in a red scarf was gesturing obscenely at Richard and yelling, “Cabron! (Bastard!)”

  Richard returned to Joy, grabbed her elbow, and herded her toward the exit gate. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “We’ll lose our place,” she said, the coins for the palm reader still in her hand.

  “Those damned women stop at nothing!”

  “Honey, just give them a dollar.”

  “You think they only want a dollar?” he snapped when they were out of earshot. “She was slipping her hand into my pocket for my wallet, practically squeezing my balls.”

  Joy didn’t know whether to laugh or be shocked. They were halfway to the exit before she finally convinced him to turn around and get back in line. Although he was reluctant and on guard, he also seemed to understand that he had overreacted. This time she stuck close to him as they moved along with the throng toward the main palace. The gypsy women were nowhere in sight.

  When they passed the guard, he barely glanced at their tickets.

  “Nobody’s paying attention,” Richard said. “We could have gone in an hour ago.”

  “You’re right,” Joy said, suddenly too enthralled by what was before her to argue.

  There was an audible collective gasp as they wandered along with the others, everyone seeming to inhale in a single breath the vivid colors and artistry of each palace room, patio, dome, and fountain. They strolled through the banquet halls and courtyards, the walls intricately ornamented with Arabic calligraphy and flowers in filigree plasterwork painted yellow, cobalt, and sienna. At once opulent and serene, the façade of the chambers’ beige stuccowork seemed to illuminate the lush, floral ceramics. Carving and color meshed perfectly, the flowers seamlessly leading into the calligraphy as if beauty was intended to soothe rather than dazzle.

  They climbed some stairs and found a plaque in one of the apartments that identified it as the governor’s residence and the one Washington Irving had occupied during his visit.

  “This must be where he wrote,” she said, clutching Richard’s arm.

  There was Irving, notebook in hand, jotting down his impressions: the wooden eaves where the pigeons roosted, the patio where the elderly caretaker prepared Irving’s meals, the garden where a pair of village lovers secretly met each night. Clearly, anyone who was lucky enough to stay here would never want to leave.

  Descending a different staircase, they arrived at Patio de los Leones, where twelve white marble lions circled a fountain.

  “Irving loved this fountain,” Joy said. “They say the ghosts of the Moors visit this courtyard each night in search of their abandoned treasure.”

  Richard snapped a photo of her with the aloof, elegant lions and arcade in the background. She watched him intently focus his lens, zooming in for a good shot, and yet, other than his interest in photographing it, he seemed detached from all that was before them.

  “Do you believe in ghosts?” she asked, almost to see whether he was listening.

  He changed his angle and blew into his camera lens as if to clear it of dust, then exhaled in frustration and began to focus again. “I should have brought my other camera,” he said.

  All at once Joy felt that she was suffocating. She’d once thought that their love had been like this, as flowing and perfect as these circling lions he was photographing.

  She turned to him, a lump forming in her upper abdomen, above her womb. She began to feel she was being smothered, not only here, but in her life altogether. “Honey,” she said, panicking, “whatever happened to us?”

  He lowered his camera. “What?”

  “I—” She quickly caught herself. She stared at the lions, wild predators and dangerous despite their beauty. The longer she stared, the more she felt defeated, as if she could no longer trust in anything positive again. All that she’d once dreamed she’d have with Richard, someone to share her delight and passion with, was never going to be.

  She held in her anxiety, not wanting to drag him into her turmoil and spoil the moment for both of them. What was she about to say, anyway? That she was having serious doubts about their marriage and had even been contemplating a trial separation?

  The notion had occurred to her for the first time only a few days ago, and she’d dismissed it like so many other thoughts, but that notion had steadily built into a very real scenario as she felt his general aloofness in Madrid and Seville. Now she felt physically ill.

  Still, she merely pointed to their surroundings. “This place was intended to represent paradise on earth. Look at all the carving and detail. Why did people stop creating beauty like this?”

  He shrugged. “Too expensive.”

  She turned away from him. Somehow, she’d known he’d say this. She’d been thinking of the artistic spirit altogether, that people had lost the capacity to be creative with what little means they had as the descendants of the Moors had done, and his thoughts had gone straight to crunching the numbers, to the practical.

  “Well, this was built by a bankrupt kingdom at the ebb of the Moorish empire,” she said. “They used cheap materials like wood and plasterwork. None of it was meant to last, and they still came up with a masterpiece.”

  Seemingly amused by the extent of her awe, Richard smiled and snapped another picture.

  She held back the tears welling in her eyes. If only we, you and I, she thought, could go back to that time of passion and grace, if we could go back to before all the unhappiness, to before Stephen. . . .

  They moved on, Joy trying to convince herself that she was just suffering from delayed postpartum depression and that her volatile emotions were causing her to come to these bizarre conclusions. In spite of her visions of separation, deep down she knew she wasn’t thinking right. Richard had planned this trip to Spain with her for her sake. And whether or not he showed it, he was probably enjoying himself in his own way. If she were a little more patient, she told herself, her distorted view of their relationship would pass, like so much ragweed pollen in the air.

  They finally came to the Sala de los Abencerrajes. She’d been eager to see this room for its famed cupola, which was shaped like an eight-pointed star. The Moors were known to love mathematics, and this ceiling was said to have been inspired by Pythagoras’s theorem.

  She collapsed into one of several wooden chairs and dropped her head back to study the intricate cones of the ceiling. The fluffy, plaster ornamentation seemed to float down from the sky as if carved out of snowflakes. For an instant, she imagined scaling a silken web up into the delicate spirals, into a sort of heaven, a baby heaven, where her own little Stephen slept cradled in the spongy white.

  Then, she was cuddling him in her arms again, looking down through her tears at his perfect infant’s face. Wracked with agony at the news of his stillbirth, she’d waited in vain for his tiny lids to open in the delivery room, so she could stare into his eyes. She tried to picture him now, to trace again his doll’s nose and mouth, sensing his little body hovering nearby. She was still unwilling to believe tha
t his brief appearance in their lives had been for nothing. Stephen. My baby love.

  Richard’s voice broke into her vision. “Know how the room got its name?”

  She lifted her head to stop him from continuing, but the blood rushed to her face. Dazed, she fought her way out of the blur before her eyes.

  “‘The Abencerrajes were a rival noble family of the caliph,’” Richard read from the book. “‘The caliph invited the leaders of the Abencerrajes to a banquet, where he had them all—’”

  “Richard! Not now!”

  “It’s true,” he said, apparently unaware of her distress. “The whole clan was murdered right here. Heads piled up in the corner.”

  Upset that he could think of ruining the place with this grizzly detail, even if it were true, she sank into silence, jarred at being reminded of the terrible truth—creators of great art could also be brutal.

  As she tried to reconnect to her earlier peaceful feelings, she spotted a young man across the room sitting on a chair like the one she was in. The man’s eyes were closed, his spine perfectly erect, as if he were meditating. His black hair hung loosely to his shoulders, and a backpack was propped on his lap. He looked like a student from India, or a yogi, she thought, tuned in to somewhere deep within, absorbing the surroundings through his breaths.

  Joy lowered her gaze and inhaled slowly, then exhaled. For a stark moment, she tried to copy him, to disappear into the very air of the room as this man seemed to be doing. She continued to breathe slowly: in and out, in and out. The room around her buzzed with tourists, but in her mind, she heard only an immense silence.

  When she looked up, the man was still perched across from her, sitting straight and immobile as a sculpture, radiating otherworldly calm.