Only in London

by Hanan al-Shaykh

  She passed the Chocolate Society shop; aside from being a chocolate addict she wanted to be in the place where she had been with Nicholas, where she’d listened as he asked for the chocolates in his delicious English. She’d gazed at the ones he liked - chocolate-coated strawberries, brandy truffles - and feeling their names inside her was like eating chocolate: it made her mouth go warm and her heart beat faster. Whoever said chocolate and sex were connected spoke the truth.

  Nicholas’s flat was on the corner.

  She hurried to the building, devouring chocolates tirelessly. She rang the bell to his flat several times, keeping her ear to the entryphone. There was no answer. She pressed the other bells, and when nobody responded Lamis took out a bunch of keys and unlocked the main door. The sight of an envelope sticking out of Nicholas’s letter box convinced her that he wasn’t there. Lamis turned the key in the lock.

  His things were as before, waiting, everything covered with a mournful layer of dust - or was it her imagination? Nicholas could not have returned to the flat at all during the past four months. Lamis’s card to him still lay on the table.

  She read what she had written: ’If you miss me, get in touch. I miss you.’

  Even Julia the cleaner did not want to be co-operative: she merely said, whenever Lamis asked about him, that Nicholas wasn’t there.

  There were no traces of another woman in the flat, the black rubbish bag on the bed was gone, so was the drawing of an insect-eating plant. Lamis played the taped phone messages: she heard her own unsteady voice with its Arabic accent, an Englishwoman’s voice, his father, his mother. She replayed the woman’s voice, and listened closely, to check whether there was excitement in the voice, or whether it was just a business call. She opened the box of chocolates she’d bought for Nicholas and began eating again.

  On the table Lamis saw the Arabic Bible. Some coloured pins of hers were still in the Japanese dish. She read the envelopes of his mail - advertisements, invitations - in case some woman had written to him, in case he now loved someone else, and suddenly saw her own name on an envelope. She was about to stamp on her nervous optimism, telling herself it was the particulars of flats and houses, sent by the estate agent, but recognising the Omani stamp she let out an excited cry.

  It contained a single sheet of paper, a watercolour of a tulip, its stem bent. Its delicate head was turned towards the onlooker, and pollen was scattered on a peach-coloured petal that was partly unfurled.

  Lamis did not know what to make of the watercolour. She tried in vain to gather clues, looking under the stack of books and the mail. She spotted drawing paper in a pile at the end of the table. At first she did not realise that they were sketches of the Devedasis, but was only vaguely reminded of the female luminaries of the temple, kneeling, standing, erect, moving, smiling or frowning; the sketched figures came to life only in the play of the shadows drawn in black charcoal. Then she saw that he’d drawn them all with her face.

  Had Nicholas drawn those sketches while he was in Oman, and brought them back with him? Did he do them in London? There was a mixture of smaller and larger sheets; some of the drawings were complete, some nearly so. Lamis’s heart throbbed with love and then uneasiness and finally anger. Nicholas must have returned to London and not contacted her. He must have sat at his table and made these sketches. There were sticks of charcoal on the table. She was sure that Nicholas must have used that charcoal to draw the sketches. He drew me when I was less than a mile away, Lamis thought. A sentence came to her aid: ’Isn’t it a miracle that we’ve met in a country with so many millions of inhabitants,’ Nicholas had once said to her.

  The sentence provoked more pain, then anger. She took her head in her hands and cried, and she only stopped when she murmured to herself, ’He’s a very complicated man, Lamis.’

  Hearing this, Lamis made up her mind and decided to leave. She put her keys on top of the drawings, closed the door behind her, and did not look back.

  Chapter Nine

  I

  ’That?’ replied Samir, when his wife challenged him with a red lipstick, ’That’s one of the tools of my job. I wear lipstick to make people laugh at me. I swear it’s mine. But why were you looking in my pocket?’

  ’You bastard,’ she replied. ’Do you think I’m stupid enough to think you need lipstick for your job, and panties and bras?’

  ’If you don’t like it, you can go back to Beirut.’

  He knew she took fright whenever he appeared to have misgivings about her being there. Where could she go? Even if she went back to Lebanon, how could she live with the four older children and the youngest, born disabled because of the bombardment in progress when Samir was on top of her. He remembered how she shook him and shuddered, and tried to make him withdraw, but he’d not managed to, until she’d slapped him on the face a few times, and then it had been too late.

  She became unbearable when he started spending most nights at Amira’s after Nahid died. She went to check on him there and, when nobody opened the door, she assumed that he’d married, and she made Amira swear on the Qur’an he’d not married her or any other woman, but she didn’t believe Amira either. His son told him that she’d begun visiting churches, starting with the local church near Nahid’s old flat, where they were living for the time being. She asked to see the priest, and when he came forward with his hand extended to shake hers, she declined, and put her hand on her chest, mumbling indistinctly. He assured her quickly that the church was for all faiths, for refugees from anywhere, and that there was a free meal for everyone once a week, whether they were from Iraq or Albania.

  She turned away from the priest to take a piece of paper out of the front of her dress, which she’d folded into a small square, just like a child’s fortune-teller game. She pointed at it, ’Jean, Jean,’ and gave it to him. ’Did my husband Samir and Jean get married in this church?’ she managed to ask the priest haltingly.

  Samir was thus forewarned when his wife chose the time he was at his least sharp, just after he had woken up, to ask him if his jacket needed ironing. She gave it a good shake in front of him and the piece of paper, which she’d replaced, dropped out of one of the pockets. She bent to pick it up, opened it out and read, ’Jean. Jean.’

  ’Are you trying to learn English, Isaaf? Not bad!’

  ’I have to, so that I know how to talk to your wife and can get along with her. I’m right, you have married again, haven’t you?’

  ’Poor Amira! How can you think such things about her with all she’s doing for us!’

  ’If only it was Amira. Mrs Jean, you liar ...’ She handed him the bit of paper.

  ’That’s Jason. A man’s name.’

  ’How did you think up that name?’

  ’Do you want to talk to him? Come on. Bring the telephone here. Set your mind at rest.’

  ’Let me dial the number.’

  That afternoon Samir felt obliged to take his eldest son and the monkey with him when he went out. He had stopped trusting his wife with the monkey after his eldest son saw her sprinkle cleaning powder into the monkey’s food. He told his wife he was taking the boy to the dentist. Each time the boy opened his mouth he screamed in pain at the inrush of cold air, which made his teeth tingle.

  ’It’s wicked to pour money down the drain,’ shouted his wife. ’Come here, son, and gargle with salt and water.’

  But Samir, who still leaned heavily on Amira, had paid attention when she swore that she wouldn’t speak another word to him unless he took his son to the dentist.

  ’Stop eating sweets, son,’ said Samir. ’Then your teeth won’t sting. Just give me five minutes. I’ve got an appointment in this hotel. Then I’ll take you to the dentist. Wait for me here at the news-stand.’

  He gave Cappuccino a piece of toffee and his son three pieces. ’These are for Cappuccino, in case there’s any problem ...’ and then he gave his son a severe warning. ’Monkeys are forbidden, son. Here even the dogs have identity documents and medical certifi
cates, and all their names are entered on a computer. Watch out. Even if it bites you, just grin and bear it, but don’t let go. You know, the monkey is our main source of income.’

  The boy nodded. ’OK, Dad, don’t worry. But don’t be long.’

  Samir looked back at his son while he was waiting for the lift. Nobody would guess that he was carrying a monkey. As usual, Cappuccino had wrapped itself round the boy, just as it did with Samir. He saw the curled end of Cappuccino’s tail in his son’s overcoat pocket, under the big scarf, and felt reassured. The toffee would keep the monkey quiet, sticking to its teeth and the roof of its mouth.

  He entered the lift, looked at himself in the mirror and combed his hair and couldn’t help thinking that he’d become an addict, never content unless he was alone with another man, except that it was no longer a question of being content, more of surviving, or of regaining his equilibrium. He was so desperate that he even took young men to Mrs Cunningham’s bathroom, a safe place away from the prying eyes of Amira’s porter, or the smell of the public baths. Mrs Cunningham’s bathroom was extremely clean, with a vase of flowers on a side table and coloured soaps in a beautiful dish, and all of these bolstered his importance with the Englishmen. Except for the art student who preferred to comb Mrs Cunningham’s few strands of hair than to give Samir another glance.

  In the hotel room that he had taken especially on account of the art student, having guessed from the time he first went with him to Mrs Cunningham’s that he would only get this youth into bed in aesthetically pleasing surroundings, Samir had finally settled on his story. He was from a family that was extremely rich. However, they couldn’t get used to his passion for the wrong sex, nor to his taste in clothes, and when they realised that they couldn’t change him, they forced him to leave Lebanon. He’d then come to London where he’d been faced with another problem: his wealth attracted the wrong type of person; this made him lose his faith in friendship and he’d begun preferring the monkey to human company.

  ’I’ve got property,’ he told the young Englishman. ’I’m a very rich woman. I’ll buy you a lizard, I mean a genuine lizard jacket from Gucci, and you’ll live a life of luxury.’

  ’Am I the boy in Death in Venice and you dirty old Dirk Bogarde? Or are you Keith Richards, or a sheikh from Arabia, who’ll be my patron, and support my talent after I graduate?’

  ’What are you saying? I don’t understand.’

  ’You look like Keith Richards.’

  ’Is he beautiful?’

  ’Yeah.’

  ’OK ... no time ... you ... please, you smoke me first, you understand?’

  The art student laughed so hard he could barely think straight. ’I knew this hour wouldn’t be wasted.’

  Instead of giving Samir what he wanted he started to ring his friends, one after the other, to recount the joke to them, until Samir was driven to distraction.

  God is punishing me again, Samir thought. Even the man I hired this room for has turned out not to be worth it. All of this because I couldn’t find the right words. I said, ’Smoke me like a cigarette,’ and now he’s laughing as if he’s lost his mind. Each time he goes quiet, he rolls over on his back and starts up again, and then calls another of his damn friends.

  ’You’d think we had all the time in the world,’ Samir shouted at him finally.

  Samir emerged from a corridor and came down the stairs, waving to his son, who shouted at the top of his voice, ’Dad. The monkey ran away and went into the wedding,’ and raced towards him, crying.

  ’What wedding? What did I do to deserve you?’ groaned Samir. ’How did you let it escape?’

  He did not wait to hear what his boy had to tell him, but hurried towards the noise and the music and the big flower arrangements in the ballroom, and began rehearsing what he would say: ’I work at the zoo. I know how to get hold of it. Mind out of the way.’

  His words were swallowed up in the noise and excitement of the wedding reception, which rose in volume as Cappucino leaped from table to table, and clung to the flowers and branches intertwined decoratively round the pillars. The shouting and laughter grew louder. The bride wept. The men chased after the monkey, which had climbed up on to the brass curtain rail. Samir and his son watched, dizzy with horror. One of the hotel employees, who were crowding into the room, had brought in a tall wooden stepladder.

  ’Let me go up. I understand monkey language,’ Samir shouted.

  Nobody heard. All eyes were fastened on the monkey, and on the man who had reached the top of the ladder, close to where Cappuccino was clinging to the curtain. As soon as the man put his hand out the monkey leaped down from the curtain on to the table that held the multi-layered wedding cake. It grabbed hold of a layer of the cake and began gnawing on it as if it were a stone, then hurled pieces of it at the onlookers and licked its fingers.

  Samir froze, and in desperation seized his son’s hand and whispered to him, ’What are we waiting for, son? Come on, your mother’s expecting us. We don’t know this monkey. Understand? It’s nothing to do with us.’

  He moved back out of the ballroom, dragging his son with him, and marched him out of the hotel; then the two of them began running until they reached the bus shelter, where Samir sat down, took his head in his hands and began to cry big gulping sobs. He had left Cappuccino to be a sideshow at a funfair, and run away. The monkey would search for Samir among the crowd to show off to him. It would have expected Samir to have heard the laughter as it jumped on to the whitewashed edifice of the cake, attacked it with relish, then pelted people with the remains. Eventually the monkey would be captured by the hotel employees and, at the thought of this, Samir spoke pleadingly to his son. ’Son, I can’t live without him. Any time now they’ll catch him and lock him up and maybe kill him. They’ll probably think he’s rabid. Shall we go back and rescue him? But the families of the bride and groom might take me to court. No, he’s had it. If I try and get him back, it’ll be the end of me, and you and your mother and brothers and sisters.’ He started lamenting for his monkey exactly as the women did back home. ’Poor Cappuccino, whose piss was enough to flood the neighbourhood! I’ll die without him! If he knew how to talk he’d tell them my name, so thank God he doesn’t.’

  Samir could not stop crying, even though his son moved close to him and said, ’Dad, people are staring at you.’

  Samir’s eyes had grown arms in the ballroom in his eagerness to bring the monkey back to him, and he had hardened himself and stood watching, alongside the people who were furious with the monkey for spoiling the wedding. He’d abandoned it like a father who comes across his son begging in the street and passes by on the other side.

  ’Dad, Dad, stand up. Come on, people are watching. They might send for the police.’

  It’s my child, thought Samir tearfully. Not you, or your brothers and sisters. I don’t know where you all came from. It was because I was scared everyone would talk about me and say I liked men. Every time the spiderwoman got pregnant, a weight was lifted off my shoulders and I could stop feeling guilty for a year.

  ’Dad, stand up. People are staring at us.’

  It should have been the monkey who talked and called me Dad. Cappuccino never got bored or fed up. Every night we went to three cabarets and restaurants. Cappuccino assembled the electric train, pretended to be a nurse, begged for cash. Even when we just walked about between the tables everyone gave us money. And what do all of you do besides eating and shitting and saying, ’Give us some money, Dad. Give us some money’? Every time I turn round I see a dozen hands reaching out. Before you all turned up in London it was the first time I’d been happy in my life.

  Samir and his son did not take a bus until Samir had convinced himself that Cappuccino would be in the zoo. Tomorrow he would go there and look for him. Should he go to the place the Englishwoman had told him about, outside London, that specialised in apes and monkeys?

  ’Son, listen to me. The people in the zoo can’t be that hard-hearted. If I g
o and tell them the story, they won’t report me. They’ll understand why I’m attached to the monkey. They might let me play with him sometimes, and who knows, maybe I’ll be able to go back and buy him off them one day.’

  The boy put his arm round his father’s shoulder and pulled him close, then asked him, ’But how can we survive without it, Dad?’

  ’God will provide. My father, God rest him, used to say, "When you’ve got a penny you’re worth a penny." And I’d started to say, "When you’ve got a monkey, you’re worth a penny." God will provide.’

  Then to himself Samir added, ’I make everybody laugh, but who’s going to make me laugh now?’

  II

  Routine had not played a part in Amira’s life for twenty years. She would find herself standing for ages in front of the wardrobe choosing clothes then change her mind and choose different ones. She would take a bath, rub herself with perfumed lotions, outline her eyes with black kohl and, since she had become a princess, burn incense in a burner on the floor and raise her dress, so that the incense would penetrate her underclothes and the pores of her skin. The sound of a voice when she talked into an entryphone sent the adrenalin coursing through her body, alerting every part of her as if she had drunk fifty cups of coffee one after another, and the fear of not finding a punter made her see flashing lights until she recited her mantra, ’Men always want sex.’

  If only she’d been content to stand on the shore catching little fish with her rod, since those innocents gobbled up her bait greedily. But ambition had made her venture on to the high seas where there were fish of all types, and whales, and big sophisticated sharks grown to maturity by eating the bait and pissing on the rod. She reminded herself that she was brilliantly intelligent and cunning. She’d beaten Scotland Yard once, made a fool of the Prince and had his private secretary eating out of her hand.