The Last Days of Café Leila: A Novel

by Donia Bijan

  Those first few weeks, leaning his forehead against the cool glass, he observed a new world below: a man sweeping the sidewalk, small dogs on leashes, women hurrying to an open-air market that spread from one end of the street to another like a colorful patchwork quilt, waiters in long black aprons sliding swiftly through café tables, and sometimes a reflection of his own pale face with a newly grown mustache he barely recognized. Who am I now? What am I doing here?

  Finally finding the courage to leave his room, he wandered the streets for hours, unable to find the way back, stumbling in long past dinner to find a note from Madame slipped under his door: This is not a restaurant, something-something (he could not make out all of her grievances), you must let me know if you will be absent for meals. He had apologized the next morning, told her he’d lost his way, and Monsieur Simon, a history teacher at the Lycée Henri-IV, drew him a map on the back of his sketchbook—a beautiful grid divided by the curve of the Seine and a cheeky castle with turrets where their little pensione stood.

  “Voici (here is) Château Chabloz.” He winked at Zod, his hands flying like doves across the page to rest on monuments. “Notre-Dame, La Tour Eiffel, L’Arc de Triomphe, La Bastille, L’Opéra, regard (look)!”

  It was Monsieur Simon, red-cheeked and full of enthusiasm, who took Zod under his wing. One night Zod walked in from a cold rain to find Simon waiting for him in the drafty foyer wearing his narrow black coat and clutching a tweed cap, with an umbrella tucked under one arm.

  “Cher petit prince! Allons-y à l’opéra! (Dear little prince! Let’s go to the opera!)”

  Before Zod could protest or make excuses, he was nudged outside into the downpour and hurried along to the Métro. A few stops later Zod emerged from the subterranean tunnels to find the Palais Garnier opera house looming above them, a building so magnificent that Zod gasped and stepped back, colliding into irate commuters. For a moment he stood there staring; it was almost eight o’clock and behind him the city grew darker and darker as he hurried with Simon towards the lights ablaze before him.

  Once inside, the air in the standing room section was damp and clouded, as if the white brume of burning cigarettes was the only thing keeping them aloft above the small luminous stage where big notes soared from tiny instruments as the musicians warmed up. And then came the roar of the orchestra. Zod didn’t know how long the performance lasted, but upright against a wall, he forgot about his soggy trousers, the jostling and the bobbing heads. Someone passed him a flask and cognac pooled into his stomach and he was warm and swaying happily.

  Afterwards they ducked into a candlelit bistro and it felt like they were still in the theater, elbow to elbow with actors and musicians in the dark wood-paneled room with its red velvet banquettes and gilt-framed mirrors. Zod felt the weight of the leather-bound menu, which he held open like a briefcase. Laid out before him were dishes detailed in gold inscription: Tourte de Faisan aux Truffes, Blanquette de Veau, Barbue aux Huîtres, Tripes à la mode de Caen. Simon explained the preparation of each dish so lovingly that it would have suited Zod to not eat at all and simply listen to this man as he translated the truffled pheasant in pastry, the creamy veal stew with pearl onions and mushrooms, the poached brill with oysters in brown butter, the baked tripe with calvados, and the wine they must order to accompany it, as he considered whether they should choose this dish or that dish and the sequence of how they ought to proceed.

  “Mais êtes-vous tout à fait certain, cher Simon, que nous avons assez d’argent? (But are you certain, dear Simon, that we have enough money?)” Zod inquired anxiously, to which his friend let out a belly laugh and reassured him that he had enough money to pay for their dinner. Better to see Tosca from the rafters and save our francs for supper, “N’est ce pas, mon fils? (Is it not, son?)”

  By the time they finished their meal, the table was covered with glasses, bottles, and plates of bones picked clean. Simon had worn himself out. There was so much he wanted to teach Zod that he sometimes ran out of breath. Laying a hand on Zod’s shoulder, he gasped, “We will see it all, all that Paris has to offer, from the Jeu de Paume and The Gates of Hell in the Rodin garden, to racing our boats in the Luxembourg fountains and betting on horses at the Bois de Boulogne. And yes, we will come here again in the winter and order the mutton and the kidney casserole. “Je te ferais voir, mon fils. (I will show you, son.)”

  Walking out into the night, the rain had stopped and the wet cobblestones glistened in the light of the street lamps as they made their way back to the pensione without speaking, their hands deep in their coat pockets and the wind from the river against the skin of their faces.

  ZOD LEFT A RAZOR, his shaving mug and brush, and a shard of soap by the small basin and grabbed his jacket from a peg behind the door. This meal was included in his rent and he felt obliged to eat it since Madame Chabloz had no intention of returning one centime of the sum paid dutifully on the first of each month. He had no appetite but took his seat in the dining room across from Pierre and Claude, two fellow students from Brittany, and Monsieur Simon, who stood to shake his hand. He enjoyed their company, learned useful phrases and accepted their friendly corrections.

  On Sundays, when Madame took the morning off, Zod cooked lunch for the four of them in the galley kitchen, recreating Nina’s creamed chicken with tarragon and leeks, poaching figs for compote, and frying duck livers to serve with thick slices of brioche. They ate together companionably, passing platters of beef tongue and parsley potatoes, refilling one another’s glasses with cheap Beaujolais, and wondering where this skinny boy from Iran had learned to cook.

  “Chez ma mère,” he explained.

  Afterwards they would go to the café for a coffee or play backgammon in the chilly sitting room wearing their hats and scarves, rolling dice with gloved hands, and on those afternoons Zod’s homesickness was a little less persistent. He missed his family terribly, but he was young and living in Paris, learning to draw and wandering into buildings that men had conceived on paper and then breathed life into every brick. He was deliriously happy, with a hunger inside him so fierce he could barely walk to his classes and had to sprint the last few avenues.

  His letters home carried sketches of a reimagined Café Leila with a courtyard and blue tiled fountains, alcoves beneath hanging wisteria, rooms with wrought iron balconies facing the garden . . . the hotel his father dreamed of. He requested recipes from his mother and combed the markets for ingredients, shaping his nostalgia for her cooking into Sunday meals—pickled beets with crème fraîche, crabapple and cabbage dumplings, plum turnovers—and filling envelopes with fantasy menus addressed to Nina. Maman, we must add crepe soufflé to our desserts. You simply fold meringue into your vanilla custard, spoon it into the pancakes, fold them in half, sprinkle with sugar, and bake them. They puff into golden pillows!

  Three thousand miles away, drawn with exhaustion, his mother smiled at his exuberance, couldn’t keep the happiness to herself, and Yanik would touch her nose and ask, “What? What did he write, Ninotchka?” When she read the letters out loud, Yanik griped, “Is he training to be an architect or a cook? Why did I spend all this money to send him abroad when he can learn to cook downstairs?”

  The one letter Zod did not have the heart or the words to compose, Claude wrote for him, explaining to his professors why he had to abandon his studies midterm. Days earlier Madame Chabloz had carried a telegram from Yanik to Zod’s room and waited at the door while he read it. She watched his face collapse and continued to hover, expecting him to share the news. Davoud terrible accident. Come home. Five words.

  “Mon frère. Mauvais accident. (My brother. Terrible accident.)” was all he managed to mumble before he shut the door on her pinched face.

  After putting down the telegram on the desk, he sat motionless in his chair for a long time, listening to the clock tick. He thought about his parents, how they could not bring themselves to write the outcome of the accident because, of course, they would have if Davoud had surviv
ed it.

  Zod remembered Davoud’s hands. When they were boys, his big hands scooped Zod up like a kitten and he was glad to be one of his older brother’s pets—Davoud kept so many small animals in cardboard boxes, he even fed the birds that flew regularly to his windowsill. They were three years apart and slept in the same room across from their parents, above the café. When Zod had nightmares, Davoud let him crawl beside him and sleep against his strong back. When Zod was two, their mother put a night vase under his bed (he was too afraid to walk to the bathroom alone at night). One morning he woke up and shit in the pot. He was so proud. Finally he had something to offer. He ran down to the kitchen, fetched a bowl and a spoon, and woke his big brother to serve him. Davoud just yelled “Maman!” then turned to the wall and covered his head with a pillow.

  If Zod cried, Davoud would dry his cheeks with his sleeve, give him a teaspoon of jam, and spin his younger brother by the legs to shake the sadness out. If Davoud had a bag of green plums, he gave Zod half. Zod remained his baby brother even after Morad was born.

  Morad tumbled into their lives like a big, juicy watermelon one August afternoon. Their mother carried him through that long, dry summer, her bird legs wobbly under his weight. At one, Zod’s pajamas were already too small for Morad, riding above his potbelly, and by age two, Zod trailed behind both his brothers. They played war, building forts and making slingshots to fire rocks at enemy pigeons, and Davoud, too generous to leave Zod out, lifted him up under the armpits to hide with them in their bunker where they crouched together in a warm pile until their mother called their names.

  A week after receiving his father’s telegram, shaved and dressed, Zod carried a suitcase downstairs where his three friends waited in the living room to say good-bye. Madame Chabloz served coffee and patted his back with uncharacteristic tenderness, and when he walked out into a bright Paris morning one last time to catch the bus, they stood on the steps outside the front door to see him off. Taking a seat by the window, Zod stared at the buildings and bridges along the way, not thinking of anything in particular, not knowing he was on his way to a funeral and a wedding, that the rest of his life was about to begin.

  ZOD REMEMBERED HIS CHILDHOOD like a story, with happy and sad parts. Pari teased that he remembered only the happy, but he kept the sad stored in an attic and rummaged there occasionally. Yanik and Nina’s story had begun when they left Russia and Zod had not considered their lives before he came into it. Everything that followed their migration had been about hard work and the possibilities they imagined for themselves. Their children fell into these choices like worker bees in a hive, industrious even in play, instinctively knowing what was expected of them.

  Zod was only three when Nina brought him into the kitchen and set him down on the gunnysacks of rice in the corner, handing him a spoon and a skillet to bang around. Already the print apron was taut on her belly, with Morad growing inside as she went about her chores, stopping to pat his crown absentmindedly while Zod stirred imaginary ingredients in his pan. It had not occurred to him to drum when all he’d ever seen his mother do with a wooden spoon was paddle through the things she peeled and trimmed and threw into the pot. His eyes followed her deliberate movements between the stove and the pantry, the furrow of her brow when she lifted a lid on something simmering on the burner and raised a spoon to her mouth to taste, the way she rested one of her small feet against her calf when kneading dough, the scent of vanilla cake on her cheek when she bent to kiss him, the tomato wedge salted and slipped into his mouth.

  Zod had not deliberately learned to read or count, but after staring so long at the sides of oil drums and vegetable crates, the letters became words, and somehow weights and numbers, telling time, and chemistry were understood involuntarily. Slowly the world became comprehensible in this space. Yanik coming in at nine, Yanik going out noon, Yanik patting Nina’s bottom, Yanik wielding a cleaver in hot pursuit of the knife sharpener who was ogling Nina, Yanik delivering a swift kick to a lollygagging iceman (huge blocks of ice were delivered from the mountains via doroshke long before they had a refrigerator). Davoud darting in after school, Davoud darting out with three apples, one in his mouth, two in his pockets, Davoud stopping to bite off a piece of fruit to share, Are you hungry, little brother? Huh? Davoud chasing Toofan the cat, which caught a mouse scent and took flight. Zod staying.

  A steady silhouette against the kitchen wall, they could have measured Zod’s growth through those early years by the marks he left on the wallpaper from the variety of things he picked up to inspect, to put into his mouth, and to fling over his head, wearing grooves into the wood at three, at four, then five. Is it possible that he would remember all this and recognize it as part of his early apprenticeship?

  Goli came to them at sixteen, newly wed to a bricklayer from her village. She arrived at dawn to help Nina with her morning chores, and once the children were off to school she washed and ironed and swept the house from top to bottom until Nina summoned her to the kitchen for cooking lessons.

  Before going home at night, Goli filled the tub with scalding water and scrubbed each of the boys until they emerged pink and clean, and while Yanik and Nina worked downstairs, she told once-upon-a-time stories and sang to them until they collapsed into her soft lap. She was more like a big sister than their nanny but they called her Naneh, which made her laugh because she was just a girl who chewed her nails and loved frilly things.

  When Goli’s husband tumbled off scaffolding and died, a boy was dispatched to deliver the news to Yanik, who whispered it to Nina, who cradled Goli for hours and stopped her from pulling tufts of hair from her scalp. The boys came home from school the next day to find that Nina had cleared her sewing room and furnished it with a bed and a dresser, and to their delight, Naneh Goli came to live with them.

  For weeks afterwards Zod heard Naneh Goli crying at night and he’d brave the dark stairwell to crawl into her room, kneeling by the mattress to sing songs and retell the stories he’d learned from her until she fell asleep.

  Once upon a time, there was a prince who lived with his two little brothers in a castle. One day the brothers rode their horses into the woods and the prince galloped so fast, he fell off his horse and broke his arms. An owl saw him lying on the forest floor and swooped down to pick him up. She took him to her house in the trunk of an oak tree. When the boy woke up, his owl mother had stitched wings where his arms used to be. “Can I fly now?” asked the prince. “Of course,” said the owl, “but remember, you must never fly during the day or humans will capture you and put you in a cage.” Under the bright moon, the boy learned to fly and he became a stealthy hunter. When the sun came up he crouched in their den and looked through the trees, and he was sad because he missed his family.

  One day, when his owl mother tucked her feathers and went to sleep, he heard the sound of horses’ hooves and saw his brothers riding below. He soared above them until they reached a clearing and there he perched on a tree stump to call to them. “Is that you? Is that really you?” they cried, and the prince gathered them under his enormous wings and told them what had happened. “We will take you to see the king and he will know what to do.” But when they reached the castle the king was ashamed to have an owl son and ordered the guards to lock him up. Whooo, whooo, called the owl prince every night. Whooo, whooo. Deep in the forest, mother owl heard him and wept.

  Up in their rooms, his brothers listened, biding their time. One night, while the guards were asleep, they went prowling and stole the key to the cage and set him free. The owl prince thanked them and promised never to forget them. When he flew into the darkness, owl mother’s eyes shone from their tree house like a lit window, welcoming him home where they lived happily ever after. From then on, the boys were forever looking up, searching the sky, and whenever they heard the flapping of wings, they made a wish to fly someday with their owl brother.

  Zod wept with every version of this story. No matter how often Naneh Goli cupped his face and kissed his brow
—it’s only a story, buttercup—he shuddered when the moon came in the window. He prayed for a new ending, the unforeseen tame conclusion of “The Old Woman Who Lived in the Woods,” but his brothers loved “The Owl Prince” and begged for it every night, lying with their eyes heavenward, listening again and again as though they didn’t know the ending, imagining a game of chase, the horses galloping in the woods, the owl’s talons stretching to stun an unsuspecting rodent, the freedom of flight with a swooping view of the world beneath them. Zod would shift his weight to lean against Naneh’s side and she’d whisper, “Shhh, don’t cry.” But tears pooled and trickled down his cheeks and he covered his ears to skip the end. On cold nights she slid a hot water bottle under the covers in a bed across from his squirming brothers—a small comfort to his shivering fear that he clutched to his chest like a shield before he fell off to sleep.

  FOR HOURS ABOVE THE clouds, flying home from Paris, Zod recalled the old stories until they blended together. He was moved by his brothers’ fearlessness, their awe of the world, their faith in it beyond the safety of their street, their yard, the people who looked like them and spoke like them—how patiently they had waited for the ending.

  Yet it was Zod, the child who had mourned the owl boy’s estrangement from his family, who had been the first to fly away from home. He had changed the ending. Whenever fear or sadness had stopped him, Davoud had cupped his hands to drink from the fountain in the yard and ordered Zod to do the same, convincing him of the water’s magic powers to make men brave. For years to follow he would stop at the fountain for a dose of courage. He was parched imagining a world without his brother.