I Think of You

by Ahdaf Soueif

  She put the lid back on the pot and closed the fridge door. Where were those photos of him as a child that she had had framed? They were not hanging anywhere. But then he had never been particularly keen on them. She remembered the silver. She rummaged around in the kitchen cupboards. She found some shoe polish and some powdered soap, but that was all. She closed the cupboard doors and went back to the dining room. Slowly she put the silver back into the corner of the sideboard. I could buy some, she thought. I could go right now and buy some polish and come back and do it. She closed the sideboard door and looked up at the wall above it. There they were. The framed maps of Sinai. The two old army maps he had used when he made his celebrated trek across the desert.

  He had gone with a friend. They had traveled by jeep and by camel, spending days at the monastery of Saint Catherine and weeks with the Sinai Bedu. She had listened wide-eyed to his tales of that trip. “Can we do something like that together?” she had asked. “But I’ve already done it,” he had said, laughing. And it was true. He had already done it. He had already done a lot of things. His memories were more vivid to her than her own. She had no memories. She had had no time to acquire a past, and in her worst moments, locked up in some bathroom, it had seemed to her that his past was devouring the present.

  She pulled herself away from the deserts and mountains and turned to the living room. Her eyes fell on the pile of fresh shirts on the couch. She crossed over and picked them up carefully and walked automatically to the wardrobe in the corridor. She pulled open the left-hand door, and sure enough, there were the shelves of clean ironed shirts. She put away the ones she was carrying. The whites with the whites and the coloreds with the coloreds, noting as she did so how many were unfamiliar to her. Then, on an impulse, she pulled open the right-hand door. Suits and jackets hung quietly in place. At the end of the row was a fur-lined overcoat they’d bought at Harrods. “Your fur,” she used to call it. “Who’s sitting warm inside his fur?” And he’d always grin and pull the collar up around his neck. She put out her hand and stroked it, then started to pull it out. Behind it, something hung shrouded in a white sheet. She left the coat and, taking hold of the other hanger, removed the shroud. She found herself looking at her wedding dress. It hung from her hand, a dream creation in white and gray lace, embroidered lovingly with tiny seed pearls. Her hand shaking, she hung it back in the cupboard and hung the sheet over it. She knelt down to adjust the sheet around the train and her fingers hit a smooth object. She pulled it out. A white cardboard box. She knew what it was. Hesitantly she opened the lid, and sprang up and back with a scream. Her veil and small, pearl-embroidered Juliet’s cap nestled in tissue paper. They were covered with black moths. Trembling and with cold hands, she put the lid back on the box and carried it to the kitchen. She put it in the sink, searched for the matches, and set fire to it. She stood and watched it burn; then she cleared up the ashes and washed the sink and her hands. Her stomach turned again, and again she rushed to the bathroom. Always bathrooms. She flushed the toilet and rinsed out her mouth, then slowly made her way to the bedroom. She pulled herself up onto the large four-poster bed and lay there, careful to keep her sandaled feet off the fine pink linen sheets. She lay still as the world pitched and tilted and, weakened now, she felt the tears creep sideways from her eyes onto the bed. This too was familiar. Lying there dizzy, weeping, sick. Recurring illnesses that they said were hysterical. “What’s wrong with you?” they asked. “Why don’t you settle?” She didn’t know, she always said. She didn’t know. She lay on the bed and sobbed herself to sleep, carefully keeping her feet over the edge.

  The instant she woke she saw the velvet-papered walls and the white lace curtains. She did not have an instant’s doubt about where she was. She knew. What she did not know was when she was. What happened? she asked, lying on the bed.

  Where is he? What did I dream? She lifted herself up on one elbow and saw her reflection in the dressing-table mirror. She did not see a round-faced girl with long, straight black hair. Instead she saw, with recognition, relief, and sorrow, the woman with the curly hair and the pearl necklace. She lowered herself gently off the bed, straightened the linen, and left the room.

  She went to the living room and headed for the right-hand side of the large bookcase. She scanned the literature shelves and picked out five books on seventeenth-century poetry. Then, carrying the books, she picked up her handbag. She walked through the flat and out of the door. She switched off the light and pulled the door to. Then she put her key in the lock and turned it firmly, twice.

  Out in the sun, she got into her little red car. She put the five books and her handbag on the passenger seat and drove down the west side of the square. She maneuvered carefully around the potholes till she came out of the bumpy road and to the roundabout once again. There she picked up speed.

  Mandy

  Wednesday, 28 December 1978

  Dear Mummy,

  I am writing to you from New York—although by the time you get this I’ll be back in London. We’re visiting (or “visiting with,” as they all say) some friends of Gerald’s. He had his heart set on coming here for the New Year, so here we are. This is our third day and I haven’t really seen anything of the city yet, but I will soon.

  I saw Saif in London just before I left and he seems okay. I found I envied him his pretty flat dreadfully. This trip has put off my accommodation problem for a bit, but I think Gerald and I are beyond working things out (did you know all along?) and I’m going to try and find a place of my own as soon as I get back to London. Although there is something quite bracing about having all my possessions in the car and being “of no fixed address.”

  Gerald doesn’t think so at all, of course. He’s ravenous for the three-bedroom house—preferably in the Boltons—and the garageful of Porsches. Maybe he’ll get them someday; I wish him luck, but I’m truly fed up with him being angry with me for “having once had them.”

  Anyway, Saif has got himself a lean-looking one too. Female, of course. And American. Yes, I’m afraid the days of Lady Caroline of the tiger-shooting, coolie-whipping father are over, and the chances of her riding for the Gezira Club as plain Mrs. Madi have quite dis-appeared.He brought this new one also up to the north of England in my last fortnight, when I was printing out the thesis. He was taking her on the Windermere round. To a little hotel run by two gay chaps where we once had dinner. He was taking her there for a couple of days and phoned me and asked could he come up and borrow the Lancia? And I said I ’d rather he took it because I was going to be finishing soon and how was I going to drive two cars away from that place? So they came up on the train and I met them. I paid twopence and went down to platform 3 as I had done so many times before and the train came in and he stepped out as he had done so many times before. As usual, he was a bit shorter than I remembered, and as usual, I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing there. Then she stepped out after him and solved my problems.She was dressed up like a Lich-field ad. A Country Casual outfit that he’d wanted me to buy back in ’75: a just-below-the-knee camel skirt, a russet cashmere jumper, and a cape—would you believe?—with a Burberry check scarf, brown

  Charles Jourdan boots, and an Etienne Aigner handbag to match. She even had fawn gloves. She looked terribly lost inside all that. It didn’t suit her at all. Anyone could see he had only just bought it for her. Her name is Mandy. She’s the small-boned wiry New York type. Arty-looking, with frizzed-out brown hair, an amazingly clear, lit-up kind of skin, and a very slight cast in her left eye, which is actually quite appealing.

  Anyway, seeing her in those clothes was weird. They’re just the kind of thing he’s always thought elegant women should wear, and I’m sure she would never, ever have chosen them for herself. Do you remember that scene I told you about in Harvey Nichols where he stopped in front of a mannequin and said, “That would look good on you,” and I started to cry and kept asking, “Why does it always have to be beige?” Well, seeing this freewheelin’, verse-writin�
�� (he says she is a poet and a photographer—both!), dope-smokin’ (you mustn’t be shocked, Mummy, everybody does it here. And you mustn’t worry: I’m not doing it) New Yorker dressed like English country brought that side of it all back to me, and I was so relieved to be through and out.But I must admit I felt a pang of jealousy: it was the idea of him looking after her, I guess. Like seeing you or Daddy being really nice to someone other than me! I mean, I wasn’t jealous jealous: I didn’t want to swap places with her or anything, and I certainly didn’t wish her any harm. I felt sorry for her: she looked so out of place, so uneasy, and so determined. I suppose it must be rough being dragged off to meet “the wife,” even an estranged wife, as he once put it (neither of us has mentioned a divorce yet).

  Anyway, he was looking great: better than any time since we got engaged.He’s stopped trying not to smoke and is back to forty cigarettes a day, except it’s Freiburg and Tryer now, not Rothmans. He’s terribly chic and he’s in a bearded phase.He looks like a gentleman sea captain. We all shook hands and smiled and I asked about the journey and we said they’d picked a lovely day for it. Then I took them to the best that the town had to offer in the way of cafés, a large room full of senior citizens and irate young mothers. It all smelled of frying, and they in their Bond Street outfits looked like posh relatives come to give a poor student a treat.

  So we had tea and I felt terribly like some mother being shown her son’s new girl, and like a mother I thought, She’s not good enough for him, which she isn’t. She isn’t pretty enough and she doesn’t have that unwavering serenity he needs. She probably is in love with him; it’s hard not to be. But also I think she’s edgy and restless and won’t be happy with him and won’t make him happy. I also fear there must be some gold-digging element there because she’s so obviously on the make and he looks prosperous. I don’t think his money can possibly last very long, though. A year maximum—and I don’t know what he’ll do then.

  Well, they drove off to the Lakes, a battery of cameras on the backseat and all that. And he phoned to say the hotel was every bit as lovely as we had thought it was when we had dinner there with Mario two and a half years ago. Three days later he came back alone to say good-bye. He said he’d left her in town to do some shopping, but who on earth was going to shop in a little town in the north when they could shop in London in a couple of hours? She just didn’t want to go through the meeting-the-wife routine again and I don’t blame her.

  Windermere, England

  11/24/78

  She met us at the station and she was so friendly I could have thrown up. Eastern inscrutableness, I guess. Her name is Asya. It actually means Asia in Arabic. He says it can also mean “the cruel one” and “she who is full of sorrow.” She insisted on taking us for tea at this dump that reeked of stale frying oil—except of course neither of them would know what that was. They must have thought it was quaint and picturesque because it was down a dirty, cobbled lane backing onto the marketplace. Everybody else there was either some bearded old woman out for her week’s supply of cheap cabbages or a harassed young mom with overloaded baskets and stroller. People that couldn’t go anywhere better. It was a depressing scene. (It was like a parable, actually: youth on its way through a lousy life to old age. It makes me wonder why we all bother to go on.)

  We sat there picking at some greasy pastry and drinking overboiled tea and making dumb conversation:

  She: It’s quite a long trip up from London really, is it not?

  Me: You must have made it lots of times?

  She: At least twenty, I should think.

  That kind of thing.

  Except then they got started on Sadat’s Jerusalem trip and couldn’t stop. Well, finally she asks for the bill, and holding it between two slim brown fingers, she raises her eyebrows with just the hint of a smile (very charmingly done): “This is hardly worth fighting over, is it?”

  She left what must have been a 50percent tip and handed over the car keys on—natch—a solid gold key ring.

  “It’s really beautiful up in Windermere. I’m sure you’ll have a lovely time.”

  She didn’t quite say “children,” but she easily could have. And of course she was careful not to mention the name of the hotel or let on if she’d been up here with him.

  “If you would just drop me off at the house?”

  But he wanted to stop by his college first.

  He says she’s finishing a dissertation, getting a Ph.D. Only the way he says it, you’re not sure if it’s a joke or what. (I’m trying to be completely fair here. I’m always 100percent honest in my journal—otherwise what’s the point of keeping it?) She is good-looking; not a stunner or anything, but okay, with a lot of shiny black hair with a loose wave in it. I think she’s older than me, but I couldn’t tell her precise age; I never can with Eastern people.

  Once we get to the college he wants to go for a walk. All it is, is a small-town campus, and we keep bumping into people who know him and all he says is “This is Mandy” and they nod and smile politely and don’t say “Mandy who?” I’m getting pretty fed up by then: this was billed as a trip to the Lake District, not down memory lane. I don’t say anything, though, because if I’ve learned anything by now, it’s that he moves at his own pace and does what he wants and screw the rest of the world. And if the world objects or has something different in mind, why then, screwing it is just that much more fun. So I trail around after him and smile and say “Uh-huh?” and “Hi” and get madder and madder.

  Then I get to thinking he wouldn’t be taking me around this place if he was planning on splitting soon, would he? And so I’m not mad anymore. I can’t really afford to be mad at him anyway. For one thing, he’s paying for this suite. (I’ve never stayed in a suite before. It’s great. Like, now I can’t sleep, but I don’t have to lie next to him in the dark or camp out in the bathroom: I can sit out here in this very beautiful “olde English” room with the fire gently dying in the grate—this is really a room to write poems in. But I must carry on with this because I haven’t been getting much chance lately. Also I feel that this is IMPORTANT and I want to always remember how it felt.)

  He’s paying for this trip. He pays for everything. Ever since I met him three weeks ago, I’ve never once had to use my own money. Which is just as well, since all I’ve got is my ticket home and five hundred-dollar traveler’s checks stashed away—what’s left of two years of saving. Except not all that five hundred dollars is really mine. There is:

  $14Owed to Clark for one week’s rent when I moved out so fast. Unless he managed to sublease the room right away.

  $50Borrowed from Jackie in Paris—to be collected when she comes over.

  $20Acid in Amsterdam (alliteration!)—for Don when he comes over.

  So that really leaves me with $416that I can honestly call my own. Wow! That wouldn’t last two days the way we’re going. He must have stashes and stashes of dough, the way he throws it around. He thinks what you do when you run out of clean socks is go down to Harrods and buy another two dozen pairs. (The reason he runs out of socks is he changes three times a day. I used to think Arabs weren’t very particular about all that, but this guy is paranoid with showers and clean clothes. Also, all his socks are black!) All this shopping suits me fine. He’s always bought me something too. Like the outfit I was wearing this morning. I was right to wear it because it’s called a lady’s traveling outfit, and that’s what I was doing—traveling. I saw her clocking it, right there in the station. I guess it looks kind of new: the creases sharp and the nap all going in one direction and all that. She probably knows the sort of thing he’d buy as well. You’re not married to someone for six years without knowing that. Not that you’d think it from the jeans and sweater she was wearing. But then she doesn’t need to bother anymore. He doesn’t mind spending his money on me. He does it like it was the most natural thing in the world. Maybe that’s Eastern too: women being chattels and all that. (Does chattel have anything to do with cattle? Maybe, beca
use the possessions of nomadic peoples would probably be livestock.) I wonder how much of that I really can put up with? It’s fun so far, but it’s only been three weeks. She must have gotten fed up with it, though—and she was born to it.

  Why the hell do I have to keep on thinking about her? I wonder how much he thinks about her? A lot, I’d guess, although he’d never admit it. Admit it? He’d never discuss it even. He’ll maybe answer a straight question, but not always.

  But seeing him with her today was really something: he was like some kid showing off. Showing off to his mom. And playing her up. One minute he’d be all intimate half-smiles and the next he’d be needling her. And she was all serene and beautiful, taking it all. It’s sick if you ask me. Sick. It could have been beautiful: two people—having passed through the Storm That Made Their Marriage and then the Storm That Wrecked It—left with a Deep and Intimate Friendship. But in their case it’s just sick. I don’t know why.

  Wow! I got upset just then.

  Man, I’d go crazy without this journal. I had a smoke and a small Scotch and here I am again. I put everything in here: accounts, observations, fragments, poems (must remember to copy out two written on the Amsterdam–London train), even the days I get my period and the nights I make love.

  Talking of making love, I just went and looked at him as he lay sleeping. He looks so peaceful when he sleeps. Not everyone does. Clark ground his teeth all night. But Saif just turns on his side and curls up like a baby. I’ve laid for hours staring at his back: the color of light caramel candy. Sometimes I’d like to lick it, but I don’t know what he’d think of that. He’s into some kind of Eastern thing he says is called Carezza: it involves him doing things to me very slowly (nothing weird or far-out, just stroking and things) and me doing nothing at all. It’s not a problem since I orgasm at least once each time, but I don’t always see what’s in it for him.