The Saffron Gate

by Holeman, Linda

  ‘Bonjour, Sidonie,’ he said, but he stayed where he was, not running to me as he usually did.

  ‘Bonjour, Badou. Falida, is Monsieur Duverger in the house?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Please go and tell him Mademoiselle O’Shea is here,’ I said.

  She went inside, and the voices stopped abruptly.

  I stood, trembling slightly, and suddenly there he was. Etienne. My Etienne. My initial reaction was shock at his appearance; he was much thinner than I remembered him, the gauntness in his shoulders I had seen yesterday more apparent. And yet his face was somehow bloated, and very pale. Had he always been this pale, or was it that I was used to a darker face now?

  He stared at me.

  I tried to remember that I loved him. But seeing him standing there, looking so … vacant, I felt nothing like love. I felt hatred. I thought of all I’d gone through, coming here, searching for him, having to deal with Manon. Then waiting for him.

  I hadn’t thought it would be like this. I had imagined him holding out his arms, and me running to him. Or me weeping, him weeping, one of us weeping, both of us weeping. Oh, I’d created so many images.

  Instead, we simply stood there, looking at each other.

  He took a few steps towards me. He held a glass in one hand; even with the distance between us, I could smell alcohol. I thought, in a detached manner, that his face might be bloated from far too much drinking. ‘Sidonie?’ he said, frowning, his forehead creasing. I thought of my nightmares, when I stood in front of him and he didn’t recognise me.

  I pulled off my haik and veil. ‘Yes,’ I said. I thought my voice might be shaky, weak, but it wasn’t. And my trembling had stopped completely. ‘Yes, it’s me. Don’t you know me?’ I asked.

  His eyes widened. ‘You look … you’re different.’

  ‘As are you,’ I said.

  ‘Manon told me you were in Marrakesh. I couldn’t believe it. You came all this way.’ His eyes ran down my body, hidden under the loose kaftan. Surely Manon had told him there was no longer a baby. ‘But… . how? And …’

  He didn’t say why. But I heard it. ‘Yes,’ I said again. ‘I came all this way. And I lost the baby. In Marseilles. In case Manon hasn’t told you. In case you’re wondering.’ It came out so easily, with so little emotion. I knew that Etienne would be relieved.

  He had the grace to shake his head. ‘I’m so sorry. It must have been a terrible time for you,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t there with you.’

  But he wasn’t sorry. I could see it; it was just his usual way of speaking. He always knew what to say. He’d known what to say to me every time he saw me in Albany. And at that, something rough and barbed pushed through me, something that might have been one of the Moroccan djinns, and I ran at him. I slapped his face, hard, on one side and then the other. The glass fell from his hand, crashing on to the tiles and exploding into pieces. ‘You’re not sorry. Don’t say you’re sorry, with that simpering look on your face,’ I said, my voice loud. I was vaguely aware of a whisper of cloth behind me, the soft pad of bare feet on the tiles.

  Badou, or Falida, I thought, but it was only the ghost of a thought.

  Etienne stepped back, his hand on one cheek. There was blood on his lip; I had hit him hard enough for his tooth to sink into it. ‘I deserved that,’ he said, staring at me, blinking. Then he shook his head. ‘But Sidonie, you don’t know everything.’

  ‘I know that you ran from me, within days of me telling you I was pregnant. You left Albany without even the courtesy of a phone call. A letter. Anything. That’s all I need to know.’

  ‘So you came all the way here to tell me that?’ Suddenly he listed to one side, but caught himself, and sat down heavily on a stool. ‘To slap me?’

  ‘No. I came here looking for you because—’

  And then Manon was in the doorway. ‘Because she couldn’t keep away,’ she said. ‘And look at your behaviour,’ she said to me, shaking her head, but there was something pleased in her expression. ‘What do they call this behaviour, in America, eh? The woman wronged?’ She looked behind me. ‘What are you two staring at?’ she said then, and I turned to see Badou huddled against Falida, near the gate. She had her arms around him as though to protect him. ‘Get out,’ Manon said, and Falida took Badou’s hand and they ran through the gate, leaving it open behind them.

  ‘I know you’re not well,’ I said now, breathing heavily. ‘Manon told me. What is it? What are the djinns she talked about?’

  ‘I can’t practise medicine any more,’ he said, lifting one hand and looking at it as if it were his enemy. ‘I can’t trust myself to be responsible for anyone’s life.’ Now he looked back at me with a tortured expression. ‘All I can do is consult. For a while. My life is over. I saw what happened to my father. Now it will happen to me. It’s Huntington’s chorea.’

  The name meant nothing to me.

  I took a step towards him. ‘I’m sorry for your illness, Etienne. But you should have told me,’ I said. ‘You didn’t have to leave me like that. I would have understood.’

  ‘I would have understood,’ Manon mimicked, her voice high and silly, but with something dark underneath.

  ‘Can we go somewhere?’ I said, glancing at her, and then back to Etienne. ‘Somewhere where we can speak alone? Just you and me? Don’t you have anything to say to me? About us? About our time in Albany?’

  ‘That time is gone, Sidonie,’ he said. ‘You and me in Albany. It’s gone.’

  I didn’t want Manon to hear anything more; I didn’t want her witnessing what Etienne and I had to say to each other. ‘Manon, please,’ I said, harshly. ‘Go in the house. Can’t you give us a moment alone?’

  ‘Etienne?’ she asked, drawing his name out. ‘Do you wish me to leave?’

  He looked at her. ‘I think it would be better.’

  Why was he treating her with such careful consideration? This had nothing to do with her.

  She left, her silk kaftan whispering about her. Once she had disappeared, I went and sat across from Etienne. The low table with a brass tray holding Manon’s sheesha was between us. ‘I think I understand, Etienne. I didn’t, until Manon told me about an illness that moves from parent to child. The … what you called it.’

  ‘Huntington’s,’ he said, his voice low, staring at his knees. ‘Huntington’s chorea. It only strikes in adulthood, usually after thirty, so it’s often that the parent doesn’t know of it until he or she has already produced children. There’s a fifty per cent chance of it being passed from parent to child.’

  We sat in silence. The imprints of my slaps darkened his ashen cheeks.

  ‘Paranoia, depression,’ he said then. ‘Spastic twitching. Problems with balance and coordination. Slurred speech. Seizures. Dementia. Eventually …’ He put his face into his hands.

  I stared at the top of his head as I had at Aszulay’s, only the day before. A surge of pity went through me.

  ‘I’m sorry, Etienne,’ I said. ‘But now I know that this is why you left me. Because you didn’t want me to have to watch you suffer. I know you didn’t think it would be a life for a wife. For our child. But that’s what people do. People who love each other. They care for each other, no matter what.’

  He lifted his head and looked into my face. His eyes were so dark, flat. I wanted to know what he was thinking. Had his face always been so closed?

  ‘But to leave without a word, Etienne. To not even have the consideration to try and explain … Well, that I don’t understand.’ My tone was calm, now. Logical.

  He looked down. ‘It was cowardly,’ he said, and I nodded, almost encouragingly. What did I want him to say? ‘And so disrespectful to you. I know this, Sidonie. But …’

  But what? Say you did it to protect me. Say you did it out of love for me. But as these thoughts came to me, I suddenly knew that although a person might be honourable enough to protect someone they loved, it wasn’t Etienne. He wasn’t honourable. He was, as he’d just admitted,
a coward.

  ‘I came all the way here, to North Africa, Etienne, to find you. That’s how much I believed in you then. In you and me. I needed to find you, to try and understand …’ I stopped. His face was still so closed, so unwilling to let me in. I wanted to slap it again. I realised my palms stung. I clenched my fingers.

  ‘That’s how much I loved you, once,’ I said. I heard the past tense. Loved. ‘Was it all a game for you, then?’ I asked, surprising myself, thinking of Manon’s words. ‘Were you only passing time with me, and I … I was so naïve, so blind, that I believed you cared for me as I cared for you?’

  ‘Sidonie,’ he said. ‘When I met you … I was drawn to you. You let me forget about my trouble. You were good for me. I had known with certainty, shortly before I saw you for the first time, that I hadn’t escaped the genetic roulette. I knew what my future held. I didn’t want to think about it. I only wanted … I needed not to think about it. To …’ He stopped.

  ‘To be distracted?’ I didn’t recognise my own voice. Again I was repeating Manon’s words.

  ‘Of course. It’s as I told you. He never loved you.’ It was Manon, in the doorway again. She came towards Etienne. ‘Don’t you see the obvious?’

  I looked at her, then back at Etienne. ‘The obvious?’

  Etienne turned his face from me. ‘Manon, not like this,’ he said, then looked back at me. ‘If I’d known where you were in Marrakesh, I would have come to you. I didn’t know where you were, Sidonie,’ he repeated. ‘I wanted to speak to you alone. Not …’ He stopped, and Manon laughed. A hard, brittle laugh.

  ‘Oh, Etienne. For God’s sake, speak the simple truth to the woman.’ She came to him, putting her hand on his arm, clutching his sleeve, her fingers, with their painted nails, like a claw. ‘She can take it. She may appear fragile, but underneath she’s like steel. So tell her the truth. Or I will.’ And then she leaned against him and kissed him. A lingering kiss, on the mouth.

  I was too shocked to respond.

  Etienne pulled away from her hand, pressing trembling fingers against his forehead. Without looking at me again he left the courtyard, through the open gate. I sat where I was, stunned into silence.

  ‘Well,’ Manon said. ‘Now you know.’ She made a tsking sound. ‘So weak, poor man. And nothing to do with his illness. He’s always been that way.’

  ‘Know what? What are you talking about?’ Had I imagined the way she’d kissed him?

  ‘He’s having such a difficult time with it all. Trying to come to terms with the truth.’ She sat beside me and lit her pipe, taking a long pull. I smelled kif. ‘He just can’t accept the fact that he did what he said he wouldn’t.’

  I looked at her lips, sucking on the mouthpiece. She had just kissed Etienne. Not as a sister.

  ‘Yes,’ she continued. ‘He said he would not allow the djinns to pass further. He would not perpetuate his disease,’ she said.

  I opened my mouth. Everything was confused, wrong. ‘But … he knows … there’s no longer a child …’ My voice was distant in my own ears.

  Manon shrugged as if only mildly interested. ‘But there is,’ she said, taking her lips from the mouthpiece for a moment.

  I shook my head. ‘What do you mean?’

  She set down the mouthpiece, holding in the smoke. Eventually she let it out in a long, slow sigh, staring at me. ‘Badou,’ she said.

  Time passed. I simply stared at her.

  Finally Manon picked up the mouthpiece of her pipe again. ‘I made him want me. That’s all. After his father’s funeral, when he still thought I was only a servant’s daughter, I asked him to help me with some small, insignificant task. Something to make him feel powerful, as though I were a weak woman, needing the help of a man.’ She smiled at the memory, an ugly smile. ‘An accidental touch, a look held a little too long … for me it was just a game.’ She smoked again, and her eyelids lowered. ‘It was simple, Sidonie. I had to do little to bring him to his knees.’ She snapped her fingers. ‘Like catching a fish with a succulent worm. I decided, when I saw him at his father’s funeral, that finally I would punish him as he deserved to be punished. I would make him want me, let him touch and taste me, and then … poof.’ Again she snapped her fingers. ‘I would send him away. I would drive him mad. I have done it with other men. It’s a pleasure for me to watch them squirm on the hook, and then cut them free. But they can no longer swim as they once did. They are damaged,’ Her face glowed. ‘Poisoned with desire for me.’

  I thought of the kneecap and tooth from a corpse. The way she had stuck me with the poisoned sliver of bone.

  ‘Of course I made him wait. I made him want me with such ferocity that he lost his mind. And then, finally, I gave in, knowing that he’d be back. He came to me again, and again and again. He had never known a woman like me. He couldn’t get enough of me.’

  I tried not to draw a comparison, tried not to think of the way Etienne and I had come together each time. Had there been this fire, the kind of passion Manon spoke of?

  ‘It was as it probably was with our father and my mother. Our father was hypnotised by my mother. He wrote her proclamations of love. I kept them after she died. I read how he loved to take her, in the room next to where his wife read, or entertained friends. It gave him pleasure to know his wife was within hearing; it was the secrecy that drove him. And so it was with Etienne. I made him take me where we might be seen, where he would be humiliated if caught with a servant’s daughter.’

  ‘Don’t,’ I whispered, sickened at her imaginings.

  ‘After we became lovers, I had him purchase this house for me, and put it in my name. I had him draw up a legal document that would afford me a generous allowance every month, in perpetuity. In perpetuity,’ she repeated. ‘He would always have to support me. Of course that was when I let him think I loved him, that I wanted only him, that we would always be together. That no man could satisfy me like him. He fell for it all. He promised he would stay, in Marrakesh, and work as a doctor in La Ville Nouvelle. We agreed there would be no children.

  ‘He did not propose marriage. Of course not. He, the great French doctor, marry a lowly Moroccan servant? Oh no. I would always be his concubine. In his heart I believe he thought no woman worthy to marry. A woman for companionship, for sex, oui. For marriage, no.’

  I had expected him to marry me.

  ‘But when I had the house, and was secure, I told him. When I knew I was in his head, held fast, with all his thoughts consumed with me, I told him. I waited until the perfect moment, as his face was over mine, and him deep inside me.’

  ‘Manon,’ I said, ‘please.’ Why didn’t I get up and leave? Why did I sit, as though I were the one under a spell, and listen to her sordid story?

  ‘We looked into each other’s eyes, his so full of desire, of love, and I told him. I’m your sister, I said. I had to repeat it. He couldn’t understand what I was saying.’ Again she smiled, that awful, victorious smile. ‘But when I said it for the third time, he pulled away from me as if my body were a flame, and I had taken all his air. Etienne, being Etienne, challenged me, asking me what proof I had. And it was then I showed him my mother’s letters from our father.’

  I felt ill, imagining the scene. I could see her face, enjoying every moment of it, and I could also see Etienne. The horror and shock. Etienne, always the one in control, the one with the answers, the right thing to say at the right time.

  ‘He became sick, right in front of me. He raged, he wept. And then he left. That’s why he went to America. Because he could no longer be in Marrakesh. He could no longer even be on this side of the ocean, so near to me, but never again able to possess me.’

  ‘Manon,’ I breathed, shaking my head. ‘Manon.’ I could think of nothing to say

  ‘But it was easy to keep track of where he was. Of course I have many influential gentleman friends in the French community. When I realised Etienne had left me pregnant — a complete accident, like you, eh? — I considered getting rid of it
. It would have been easy; don’t I know enough about these things? I have rid myself of others.’ She stared into my eyes. ‘But something told me it would be better to keep the child; a further insurance policy. I wrote regularly to Etienne over the years, telling him I was a mother, talking about the child. But I made no accusation. He never replied. And then, last year, my needs grew, Sidonie. So I wrote to him that I was sorry I had used him, that I had changed, and wanted to repent. And that there was a deep secret, something I could only tell him face to face. Of course he suspected, and so because of my urging — and to get away from you — he came back to Morocco.’ Then she lowered her chin, looking at me almost coquettishly.

  ‘Did you not wonder why Etienne — a man like Etienne, clever and worldly — wanted a woman like you, Sidonie?’

  I blinked. ‘What? What are you talking about?’

  Manon’s face was full of contempt now. ‘You idiot. Can you see nothing? Etienne never stopped dreaming of me, wanting me. It’s me he loves, not you. Do you not look in the mirror, and see what I see? Do you not recognise that Etienne saw in you something that reminded him of me? Of the one woman he loved? Even the fact that you painted, well …’ She shrugged. ‘He chose a shadow, since he couldn’t have the bright light. That’s all you were to him. A feeble reflection of the woman he truly loved, but couldn’t have; he only turned to you because you reminded him enough, in appearance, of me. And he knew that he could so easily possess you. He could never possess me, but you — don’t you see? Every time he held you, every time he made love to you, Sidonie, he was dreaming of me, closing his eyes and seeing me. You never meant anything to him. Nothing at all.’

  I stood, knocking over the brass tray; it hit the tiled floor with a clanging ring. In the dying echo I heard Manon’s words, over and over, as if holding a mirror to a mirror, all the reflections closing in on each other.

  Nothing at all.

  THIRTY EIGHT

  I sat on my bed, seeing myself in the mirror across the room. I was exhausted. After all these months of waiting and hoping, now it was over.