by Hisham Matar
The secretary’s arm stretched beside me and set a coffee cup on the desk. Hass waited until she left.
“So what brings you to Geneva?”
“Just passing through. Thought I should show my face, say thank you.”
“Everything is OK moneywise, I hope?”
I noticed a thin veil of moisture glistening on his brow. A new expression passed across his face then vanished.
“Living with his legacy, with what he had done, the path he had taken, must be difficult.”
I was sure he took the silence that followed as agreement.
“But you must not blame him. He certainly did make difficult choices, but you must not judge him. You must put all that aside and be proud of his bravery, his single-mindedness. A lesser man, especially with his intelligence and means, would have walked away, lived a provincial life somewhere.”
“I would not have minded that.”
He did not respond, but the droplets of sweat on his brow swelled.
“I remember him mentioning a town in northern California, a place he liked. Yes, I remember it now. He was sitting where you are, in the same chair, and said, ‘Charlie, I am thinking of taking my boy and moving to America. I have bought a place for the purpose. In Point Reyes.’ ‘Where is that?’ I asked. ‘Northern California,’ he said and I could not restrain myself. I’m glad to say he laughed too. The thought of your father relaxing on a Californian beach! But I think he did feel torn, worried what his life might mean for you. Worried where things might end up. He was right to worry, of course.”
We both were silent. Hass let out a heavy breath.
“I took him out after that for a wonderful lunch—your father was famous for his long lunches—and he never mentioned California again.”
Suddenly everything in that room looked old, worn out: the desk and old sofa in the corner, Hass’s suit.
He looked down at his fingers, which were long and thin, and spoke softly, as if to himself.
“He really was a great man.”
I let my eyes rest on the gold irises linked round the inside lip of the small coffee cup. There was comfort in staring at the blackness of the coffee, the steam rising in gray breaths above the liquid.
“Whatever happened to Béatrice Benameur?”
His eyes here looked even more wary.
“Did you ever track her down again?”
“Yes. The years have been hard on her too.”
“I would like to speak with her. After all …”
For some reason I could not complete the sentence.
“Of course. I’ll try,” he said gently into the silence. “Leave it with me.”
I wrote down, slowly, the name of the hotel where I was staying, the room number.
I descended the Old Town to the lake’s edge and there sat on a bench. My mind set off imagining another possibility of myself: one who was more proactive, more courageous and more capable, one whose interrogations were less desperate and incomprehensible to himself. The shame and the regret nagged, and together they were as persistent as the cries of the seagulls that hovered now above the lake. The clouds were skipping fast. They cut the light into lines that traced the water and the craggy backs of the mountains that blocked the horizon. I felt dizzy, as if comprehending the scale of things for the first time and with it the vast yet intricate reality of the physical world and my precarious presence in it. I held my head and stared at the blades of grass at my feet. I counted the stitches round the leather of my shoes. I wanted this world to still. I wanted to fix it and be fixed within it. But everything was on the move, the clouds, the wind.
A boy was now sitting on the other end of the bench. How long had he been there? He watched me for a long time before he spoke.
“Are you sad?” he asked.
I tried to smile.
He looked down at his knees again. His legs were too short to reach the ground. Every so often he kicked the air. He turned around suddenly. How did he detect his mother approaching? She came and sat down between us, took out something wrapped in a paper bag and handed it to him. She took it back and peeled off the wrapping and handed it to him again. They sat in companionable silence, eating their sandwiches, his mother turning now and then to wipe the crumbs from his chin.
I left them and climbed up into the maze of streets of the Old Town. I walked fast until the steep roads slowed me down. Night fell like a shutter. There was no moon. The streetlamps were on. It must have rained, too, because the amber light was reflecting off the wet cobblestones. I touched my hair, and my palm shone. But the air was wonderfully mild, and I felt no need to button my jacket. The trees and bushes, swollen with late summer, released their scent. I was alone. The streets were deserted. I looked at the time—at the watch my father had last worn in this very same city. It was half past eleven. I had been walking for hours. The stone buildings stood dimly in the night, and, looking at them, I felt a deep longing to inhabit their rooms. To make love and eat and bathe and sleep in there, to quarrel and make promises, to sit with friends and talk into the night, to listen to music, read a book, write a letter, consider the position of a new object, watch flowers in a low vase, watch them at different times of the day, clip their stems and replace their water daily, move them away from a harsh light, a drafty passage, draw out their time. It was then that I heard a man calling me. How strange it was to hear my name echoing in the vacant street. Then the clatter of hoofs. I turned, expecting to see a horse’s full and muscular chest approach. But I was mistaken. They were footsteps. Two people. One was Monsieur Hass. I would have recognized him sooner were he alone. He looked far more relaxed than when I had seen him earlier that day in his office. A strand of silver hair fell over his forehead. His arm was intertwined with that of a woman. She had on the same pencil skirt. When I recognized who she was I took a step back. It felt as if all the air had gone out of my lungs. I could not speak.
Béatrice Benameur extended her hand.
“I am so sorry.” She paused. “But I am so pleased to meet you, finally.” She placed her other hand on top of mine.
Yes, they were definitely tears.
“I saw you yesterday at the café,” she went on, “but I didn’t know who you were. Now Charlie tells me …”
Hass laughed. “She got the wrong idea, thought you were …”
She unhooked her arm, and that made him stop. She dabbed the place beneath her eyes with a piece of tissue paper folded into a small square.
“Can we walk together? I only live in the next street. You must have many questions,” she said.
We walked, she on one side, I on the other, with Monsieur Hass in the middle. There were so many things I wanted to ask; so much was unanswered that I felt a sudden, terrible panic.
We reached her building, the one with the cupids. I wanted to ask her now why she had not opened up when Hass brought Mona and me to her door all those years ago. I wanted to know whether she really had been inside all along, perhaps on the floor behind the sofa, shutting her eyes tightly every time Hass pressed the loud buzzer.
We shook hands, and she placed her other hand on top of mine again. I realized she must have picked up the Arabic habit from my father.
“Please come up,” she said. “I have always wanted to …”
Now that the moment I had longed for had finally arrived, I could not speak. In the silence that followed, Hass looked at her. He then nodded earnestly.
“There will be time,” he said. “You are not leaving yet, are you?” When I did not respond, he said, “Good.”
He followed her, which surprised me because, even though they had walked arm in arm, I was certain they were not lovers.
I could not bear the parting. I had to force myself back to the hotel.
CHAPTER 31
In the morning I telephoned Hass’s office. His secretary put me on hold for a long time, then returned to say, “I’m sorry, I will have him call you straightaway.” I remained beside the telephone. My he
art quickened every time I heard the telephone downstairs ring, then the receptionist say, “Hôtel Eden, bonjour.” Twenty minutes later he called back. I let the telephone ring three times before answering it.
“We need to talk. I need to explain. I will come to you. Can you meet in ten minutes?”
Fifteen minutes later he walked through the hotel lobby.
“After you,” he said, placing a hand between my shoulder blades as we entered the same compartment of the revolving door.
After a few paces I stopped.
“How long have you known her?”
He lightly held my elbow. “Come,” he said.
“Before or after the disappearance?” I asked, refusing to move.
“Before,” he said softly, regretfully. “Please, come, I’ll explain everything.”
He took me to the café where I had first spotted Béatrice. The waiter greeted him then looked at me for a second too long before he led us to a table by the window that looked out onto the street. Hass slid a long thin finger round his collar.
“I did not mean for you to meet her like that.”
He pushed himself to the edge of the seat and looked at his hands.
“You lied to us,” I said.
Instead of protesting he said, “Yes, I did. But out of kindness. It would have been too much.”
“I don’t understand. And what did you mean yesterday when you said that she had got the wrong idea? Who is she? And how do you know her? And if you knew her, then why didn’t you tell me or Mona?”
“Actually, I did too. I had misunderstood the situation entirely. You see, I have been concerned ever since a couple of days ago when she passed by to tell me that there was a suspicious man in the café, an Arab-looking man who pretended to be reading a newspaper. ‘Did he follow you?’ I asked. She said, ‘Yes,’ and that, the next day, the waiter told her, the Arab had come back and looked like he was waiting for her. This happened once before, you see, and the experience left her … Well, she was distraught, absolutely distraught, of course. Who can blame her? And I worried for her and for myself; it seems the people who took your father would stop at nothing. Even after you visited my office yesterday I did not put two and two together. But how was I to know that the man she had encountered was you? So I told her not to visit the café again. And last night, when you saw us together, I was walking her home.”
Then Hass looked down at his hands and smiled a sincere, affectionate smile.
“When we first saw you, she held tightly to my arm and said, ‘That’s him.’ I laughed. ‘That is Kamal’s son,’ I told her, and she could not stop looking at you. She wanted me to introduce you right there and then, but, like I said, I didn’t want you to meet that way. So she insisted we follow you from a distance. At one point we were so close that we heard you talking softly to yourself. But then suddenly you seemed to remember something. You began walking quickly and after a few streets we lost you. We came upon you again by chance. You were standing in the middle of the empty street, looking up at the buildings. I could see her eyes well up. ‘He’s crying,’ she said and pulled me toward you.”
Hearing this account made me uncomfortable. I tried to look out of the window.
“I am sorry you had to meet her that way,” he said and laughed a nervous laugh. “But to think she thought you were …”
“Who did she think I was?”
He rubbed his hand harshly over his mouth.
“Monsieur Nuri, I am sure they visited you too.”
“Who?”
“Do you mean to tell me that in all of these years no one came to see you?”
“For God’s sake, who do you mean and what did they tell her?”
The waiter arrived at our table, so Hass stopped before answering. The waiter kept his eyes on me as he placed the coffee cups on the table.
“Do you know who this is?” Hass asked him.
The waiter looked apprehensive.
Hass went on, “It’s Kamal Pasha’s son.”
The man’s face changed. He looked at Hass for confirmation, and Hass raised his eyebrows and nodded. The waiter held out his hand, and I took it.
“Pleasure, pleasure,” the waiter said.
“His only son,” Hass said, as if he was remembering that fact for himself.
“Odd that you should come to the same café,” the waiter said. “You felt him, monsieur, you felt him in the air.”
I looked at Hass, and he explained: “Your father used to come here a lot.”
“Really?”
“Yes,” the waiter said. “Every morning. He used to live nearby, you know, and—”
“Enough of that now,” Hass cut him off.
“Well, you are very welcome, monsieur, very welcome indeed,” he said and shook my hand again.
After a short silence Monsieur Hass spoke.
“I have known Béatrice all my life. And, yes, I did hide that from you. But it would have been too difficult then for her and for you—particularly for Madame Mona—to meet.”
He leaned back in his chair.
“You see, most men spend a lifetime trying to understand their fathers.”
I was certain he had rehearsed that last line; it seemed to come from nowhere.
“In my case, there was no more mysterious a man than my father. He was the old-fashioned sort. Loving, but formal. Died when I was young. But I shouldn’t think I would have felt different if he were still alive.”
“My father and I were very close.”
“Of course you were.”
How did we end up in this place, I wondered, where he was pretending to tolerate my illusions?
“But the facts of a man’s life,” he went on, “tell much more than his presence. I need to tell you about Béatrice. You don’t know who she really is or what she meant to your father. And when you know you will understand my actions.”
“What was she doing there, anyway? It’s very suspicious. And the fact that you lied to us makes it more so.”
Hass turned to me with a serious look.
“You need to talk to her,” he said. “Enough time has passed. She meant a great deal to your father and had nothing to do with his disappearance. She has suffered deeply, and silently, ever since it happened.”
Then, after a long pause, he said, “What is it that makes some men unsuitable for married life? To some it’s a comfort, to others a prison. And why are some content with one woman while others are not? These are stupid questions.”
“I am relieved you think so.”
“But the truth is, your father had lovers. However, with Béatrice, things were more complicated. I can say, without any doubt, that your father loved her. I would be very surprised, if he is still alive, if he is not still in love with her. It was very powerful. And together they had a life here, you see, in this city, which resembled a normal life, a life like any other married couple, one, I suspect, not too dissimilar from the life you and your mother shared with him in Cairo.”
The ants were now all over my body. I wanted to leave. But then he spoke again.
“Something occurs between a man and a woman that no one can access.” He looked out onto the street. “A secret that even they might never know. Here she comes,” he said, and we both watched Béatrice cross the road. “Be tender,” he whispered, and I found myself whispering back: “Don’t worry.”
Béatrice Benameur walked into the café and sat beside Hass.
“I will leave you two to talk,” he said, standing.
“Can you not stay?” she said.
He smiled at her in a way, I suspected, he reserved only for those with whom he was most intimate.
We watched him leave. He waved as he walked past.
“He is a good man. Can be overprotective. Ever since we were children he has been like this. Did he tell you? We are cousins.”
“I see.”
There is a moment when a deer sees its hunter and knows him. That was how Béatrice Benameur looked at me now
. I recognized in her something of myself. We were the survivors, those fated to remain behind. She looked away, and I studied her features. Time had cut lines into a face that was undoubtedly still beautiful. I imagined how she and Father might look now sitting side by side, growing old in a city in which one could take many things for granted.
“There isn’t a day that I don’t think of him,” she said. “He passed through my fingers. I feel responsible. As if I had dropped him.”
I bit hard because my teeth were chattering. Was she the first person Father had telephoned the day Mother died? I would have forgiven him. I wondered what he was to her, what she called him, if they had nicknames for each other.
“In my mind,” I said, “I never have him whole. I am always standing too close to take him in properly.”
Then there was a long silence, and I felt I had said too much.
“They came in so quietly while we were asleep. I still don’t know how they managed to break in without making a sound. I am such a light sleeper. Your father used to tease me; he would say a cloud passing over a full moon would wake me. When I woke up they were right there, a couple standing at the foot of the bed. I could not see their faces because the moonlight shone through the window behind them. The slowness of it. I turned to wake Kamal, but he was already up. I remember thinking: how did he know they were coming? He was sitting up in bed and looked like he had been waiting. I tried to scream but couldn’t. By now I could make them out: a man dressed in a suit, almost smiling, and a woman standing beside him. She seemed panicked, really tense, and was shouting at her partner; he, on the other hand, looked like he had done this many times before. The man said something in Arabic, and Kamal began to get dressed. I started shouting, but none of them, not even Kamal, flinched. The woman pulled out a gun with a silencer, and I stopped. Her hands were trembling, I remember that. They held him by each arm and walked him out. He did not take his eyes off me. I can still see his face, turned back. I see it in dreams, and I see it when I am awake. I walked around the room. I didn’t know what to do. Then I called Charlie; Kamal said that if anything ever happened I should call Charlie first. He asked me to wait twenty minutes before calling the police. When I asked why, he just repeated that I must wait at least that long. I understood when a journalist friend of his arrived five minutes before the police. Charlie’s idea was that the more coverage the kidnapping got stressing the political angle—that an ex-minister and prominent dissident was snatched on Swiss soil—the more chance there was of finding Kamal. Of course I didn’t want to be splashed across the tabloids, but I was glad to do it, because if the police had got there first the whole thing would have been hushed up in a minute.” After a short pause she asked, “What do you think happened to your father?”