The Last Patriarch

by Najat El Hachmi

  After her afternoon doze might have been the most stressful time for her, she folded clothes, ironed or darned socks, took hems up and, from time to time, made us cakes or sweet pastries that weren’t too sweet.

  She sent my elder brother to the flour merchant’s next to the Municipal Market to fetch a fifty-kilo bag to save money, so the money that father gave her lasted longer. Until he got halfway back one day and the paper sack burst, right there, at the crossroads in front of the Parc Jaume Balmes, and nobody knew what to do to help him. What was a boy so young doing there covered in flour from head to toe? they must have thought, and couldn’t know it was the most fun thing that had happened to us in a long while. He came home shouting, where’s father? Where is he? Where’s father? despairingly, and the other two of us took some plastic sacks and salvaged what we could and the ground stayed white for a good few days afterwards. Where’s father? Where’s father? Where is he? he asked again when the plumbing in the middle of the dining room burst and all the filth from the terrace started pouring out. It rained down and flooded the dining room with dirty water. I remember it rose above my ankles and we called one of father’s friends, a neighbour, to start emptying bucket after bucket of water out of the window. It rained even more and we shouted more loudly than ever, where’s father, until he walked through the door as cool as a cucumber. Mother made it plain she was in her bedroom and had been all the time, in case he thought she was having it off with the neighbour.

  He appeared and disappeared to suit himself, and you never knew when he’d come. He sometimes woke mother up at midnight to chat, he sometimes woke me up and mother didn’t realise until there I was half-asleep opposite her. I’d say I want to sleep, and he’d reply don’t you love your father? I want to tell you why it’s all like this, dear, so you don’t think I don’t love you. I love you all too much, but your mother did the worst thing you can do to a man and I don’t know how I should live my life now. I’d nod off and he’d say don’t fall asleep when I’m talking to you and mother would say, let her be, she’s got school tomorrow.

  He sometimes woke me up to take me to the cinema with Rosa, to the late night session, saying he wanted me there, if I was there she wouldn’t attack him. I’d like to get rid of the stinking Christian this minute, but she won’t leave me in peace. She says she loves me and has even had an abortion that was all my fault.

  He even led me by the hand to a discotheque and everyone asked Manel, what are you doing bringing your daughter here? and they all asked how old I was. I think I even fell in love with that friend of his with the curls, but maybe it was the night-time, the blaring music and the Coca-Cola going to my head at two in the morning. You come with me, he’d said, and mother didn’t want me to, it’s no place for a girl at this time of night, even if you are her father.

  It was foggy one day when he came home really scared and told us the car had turned over three times. Bottle of Butane and he weren’t injured.

  He had to hit rock bottom sooner or later. That stench he left in the bathroom in the morning, where he spent so long, his stomach ulcer, his piles, how could he live life like that?

  One day he was in the bed with mother, both of them half-naked and me in the dining room, embarrassed to see them like that. It was the day I realised he’d hit rock bottom, and I felt sorry for him. Come to your father, come on, I miss you so much. I remember I didn’t want him hugging me against his sweaty skin, even if he’d buy me chocolate ice cream afterwards. He said sit down. I sat down. On the bed, as far from him as I could, and he said, why don’t you love your father? And he was holding mother on one side and me on the other and that was shameful according to all the rules of behaviour I’d been taught by the grandparents, mother and my uncles and aunts. I couldn’t stand it, and went very quiet while he went on about things I didn’t understand, but now when I rewind, they do mean something. He always said that stuff about Rosa only wanting to do it from behind, and I didn’t know what doing it was or what it was behind. It was on one of those days when I went very quiet and he fell asleep that I realised he’d hit rock bottom. It wasn’t the stench, the alcoholic sweat in the middle of the afternoon, no. All of a sudden he put his hand on the nape of his neck and there they were in the hair in his armpits. Mother, I said. And she said, yes, they’re ants, that’s right, my love.

  I, for the letter i. I, a conjunction. Iac, a mammal.

  11

  The neighbour

  The days passed by, in the same vein, with not too much grief. Except father had hit rock bottom and that led to fallout. Sometimes our Saturday shop couldn’t go ahead, we couldn’t always pay for our school books on the right day, trips out had to be put off and the fridge with the completely rusted door continued to be the fridge with the completely rusted door. We never knew when he’d disappear and we’d again be an abandoned wife and children, except there we didn’t have grandfather to remind us it was his son’s duty to keep us. We simply had the neighbours opposite who said, report him, everybody can see what he’s doing and if you like we’ll go to social services with you. Mother said no, I’ve never asked for charity and this won’t be the first time, and she eked out her savings as best she could.

  She’d learned how to save. When he came home drunk with a pile of small change he’d scatter over the dining room table, next to his keys and crumpled packet of Ducados. When he brought a wad of notes he’d gotten from a customer who preferred to pay cash and avoid tax and he sorted it into little heaps to pay his suppliers, workers and secretary. He’d leave one heap for housekeeping, but mother knew he’d be back saying give me 10,000 or 20,000. And mother saved. She’d grab two coins today, two tomorrow, a note here, a note there, and told me I’ll burn your mouth with a cigarette lighter if you tell him. We also learned to save, especially from down the sides of the sofa, where coins fell from his pockets, or under the bed, where they’d often drop and he’d not notice.

  But anyway he loved us, particularly me. That school teacher asked me what’s that you’ve got there and I said father’s kisses and she said, how odd, your father’s kisses leave marks like that on your cheeks? I couldn’t see anything odd in that, it was simply the way he showed his love. Mother didn’t kiss us very much, and the grandparents and our uncles and aunts’ kisses were very different. They weren’t damp like his. When he said goodbye, sitting at the top of the stairs, he’d grab you and sit you on his legs and give you those big sucks all over, he said he couldn’t help himself he loved me so much. Kisses that sounded like the thud of a tennis ball. After he’d said come on, let’s act like pigeons. Come on, I’ll play mother, I’ll feed you from my beak, open your mouth wide, and he’d land those kisses that were very wet and not salty.

  Two important developments changed things just when we thought our lives would never change.

  A family came to live at number sixty-six, a few houses down from ours, they were from the same village as us. A married couple and their three children. The man was always laughing, and so was his wife, and they didn’t seem too intelligent, but mother stopped telling me so much and I felt relieved.

  It wasn’t as if mother paid this neighbour a visit, the back part of both apartments were near enough to be able to talk out of the window to each other. The evenings were more bearable with the pair of them swapping stories and finding common links, acquaintances or family, remembering a past that wasn’t the same or remotely similar.

  When mother heard the key in the lock, she’d say I must go, he’s back, and she behaved as if she’d never spoken to Soumisha. Father had never said she couldn’t talk, but better not put him too much in the picture.

  Particularly because they were always talking about Bottle of Butane. Has he filled her with gas this week? she’d ask. And mother would say it’s disgusting him sleeping with her and then coming into my bed, I don’t want him there. Even his father, who had his moments, and you know all about them, never thought of having another woman, let alone an ugly, dirty thing like h
er. You should see her legs, because she eats so much pork, or the alcohol they knock back, I’d say.

  Soumisha was different, not smarter than mother, perhaps just happier. She did her housework as best she could, although she never killed herself and the bedrooms in her house were half empty and everything was very dark. Her bread wasn’t the best in the world and she sometimes asked mother for some of hers, because her husband said he’d never tasted bread like ours. I wondered if it wasn’t a kind of adultery, baking bread for a man she didn’t know and who admired her because she coped with all that. Soumisha would say Dris says if it were me I’d have gone mad by now, but Dris wasn’t Mimoun or Manel and he was almost always laughing.

  Soumisha was different because she went shopping in the market, visited other women who’d come from the province we were from, looked for material to make kaftans for the day they’d make their annual journey back down. I couldn’t be here all that time and not see my family and not taste prickly pears, ay, my dear, I’d die in no time.

  Dris worked in the factory at the top end of our street and his earnings didn’t go very far, but Soumisha soon started to do a few hours, as she put it, even though she wasn’t as smart as mother.

  One day I heard them talking out of their windows. Soumisha was always trying to persuade mother it wasn’t a situation she ought to accept, but she put all the blame on Rosa, who’d wormed her way into our lives. You know, those slags do all they can to snatch your husband from you, they’ve always been the same, here and everywhere. But you have a good man who works for you and leaves all his money at home, not like mine, who’s a rat who won’t spend a peseta more than is necessary. He’s a good man, believe me, what happens is out of his control. And she explained that business of the love potion in the tradition of Curial and Güelfa13. Spread a kilo of sugar, and only sugar, on a white tray, it has to be white to work, and make a footprint on it with your right foot, make sure it’s your right. Keep the sugar and put it in every cup of coffee or tea he asks you for until it’s all gone. No need to say this out loud, but when you put in the first small spoonful of sugar you should say, even if only in your thoughts: I will be like this sweet sugar for you, you’ll only want to come to me and you won’t think any other woman in the world is pretty. You’ll only be able to think of me day and night, night and day, come back home, you’ve been led astray by the devil. And give thanks to God. Don’t worry, it will work.

  I looked at all that, and mother said if you tell… and I said, I know, I’ll not say a word, I too want things to be like they were before. But I could no longer remember when that before had ever been.

  How easy it was, being able to be happy! Father began to say I can’t think what’s up with me, I can’t stand the sight of the woman, I see black just to think of her. She’s crazy about me and is expecting me to send you back down there so she can live with me, when I can’t stand her at all. I tried to avoid not going with father when he went out with her so as to avoid hearing her weeping, your father’s hurting me, you know, he’s hurting me a lot? And I’d even feel sorry for her, I’d got so used to seeing her, and how her eyes got dimmer and dimmer, the only part of her body worth looking at.

  But Rosa still harboured hopes when father said he was beginning to hate her and when the second of the developments took place that was to change everything.

  Something happened that doesn’t happen if your wife is only the mother of your children and you don’t sleep with her because you don’t really love her because you only love yourself. Mother was pregnant. Ja, all ready, no longer. Jaborandi, a shrub; jac, jacket.

  12

  Yet another New Year

  You should abort, father said, and mother shuddered just to hear him. I’ll not have a life on my conscience just to give you the pleasure of carrying on with that whore.

  Father carried on behaving the same way, despite the sugar and the pregnancy. I missed school to go to the doctor’s with my mother and had my sexual education long before my classmates. I read the Guide to Your Pregnancy to avoid having to see my mother with her legs apart on that narrow bed that seemed like the rack. I tried to stay behind the curtain as I translated what the midwife was saying.

  There were things I didn’t know how to shift from one language into the other, or didn’t want to. I still couldn’t understand why so many women everywhere talked to me about that kind of thing. When was the last time your mother had her period? I knew what a period was, but I’d never talked to her about it. When did she have her first? When she was sixteen, that’s good, no need to worry till I’m sixteen. And the first time she had sexual intercourse? My God, my God, I wanted to run away, I didn’t want to know about all that, let alone translate it into a language in which I knew no words for sexual relationships that weren’t rude ones. I couldn’t run away and the midwife stared at me with her red nails on the table, go on, quick, ask her. Mother looked at me and said what have they asked you now, and I would have liked to disappear there and then, and let them sort themselves out. I couldn’t say fuck, could I. I couldn’t ask when was the first time father stuck it in you? Shag? No way. I tried to find a euphemism. How old were you when you slept with father for the first time? And I didn’t look her in the eye when I said that; she replied, also very quickly, we got married when I was eighteen. That’s all.

  I got used to reading the educational posters in the waiting room, analyses, tests, take iron, get the baby’s clothes ready, etc. I wanted to tell that woman with the dyed jet-black hair that mother had already given birth three times and everything had been fine, with no O’Sullivan tests or prenatal gymnastics.

  I was really looking forward to having a little sister, so I wouldn’t be the only girl, the favourite, and would then get less of those tennis-ball-thud kisses. But they told us at the second scan, it’s a boy. Mother couldn’t believe it, how can they know what’s in my belly, only the Lord can know that.

  Father came and went, as usual, and told me not to say anything to Rosa. I think she must have known from the very beginning, although she hadn’t seen mother for some days, everyone knew she was pregnant.

  Father wasn’t there the night mother’s waters broke. It was New Year and he was out celebrating, naturally. I was asleep when mother woke me and I thought, please, not now, and asked her if it couldn’t wait to the following day, by which time he’d be back.

  I don’t know how I did it or why mother didn’t wake my brothers up. I had to see to everything all by myself. In another situation grandmother would have been there, that old woman from the village would have been there who delivered all the women, grandfather would have been there to take her to hospital in case of complications.

  But it was just me, and I began to realise that life wasn’t all it should be or what you might imagine it being like at that age. Go and get Soumisha and tell her what’s happening, your father won’t be here for some time. She said that gripping her side, under her ribs, which is apparently where it hurts most when you’re going to have a baby. You’ve got to breathe, I told her, that’s what the book says. Of course I’ve got to breathe or I’d die, are you crazy, go and wake up Soumisha.

  But Soumisha is the deepest sleeper in the world and there was no rousing her. Her bell wasn’t working and I kept banging on the downstairs door that she locked at night. A wooden door.

  I went to the nearest bar, where they put on a special New Year’s Eve dinner, and saw the owner, his wife and his children. I asked if they’d seen father, and they shook their heads. Happy New Year, deary. I didn’t know who to tell and, in the end, I spoke to the eldest son, the one with the sparkling eyes, who winked at me and ruffled my hair whenever he could. Mother is in labour, Ángel, I don’t know what I should do. He wiped his lips with the white napkin, put it on his plate and stood up. He took my hand and led me into the front part of the bar. The warmth from the palm of his hand helped me to breathe better and I think that’s where I fell in love with him just a little.

&
nbsp; Don’t worry, I’ll take your mother to hospital and you can stay here in case your father comes back or your brothers wake up. I cast off my Superwoman cloak and breeches and told my mother. She said, go to sleep, you won’t get anywhere by staying awake, and if he comes tell him where we are.

  And so mother went to give birth, sitting in the back seat of Ángel’s car. Not saying a word to each other, because she knew him but couldn’t say my husband’s a bastard and he could hardly say, Manel, that son of a bitch, not here on a day like today.

  I’d been left on my own before but that didn’t mean it was easier. What if a thief or a murderer or a madman came? What would I do to protect my brothers who were sleeping, or to stop them taking our valuables? Not that we had much of value, but the thieves weren’t to know.

  I sat on the sofa, hugging my knees and recreating the heat from Ángel’s hand in mine, his smile, don’t worry, don’t worry, it will all be all right. Until the door opened. Until I heard the sound of keys and thought it was too early to be him, but it was him. Mother is in hospital, she’s in labour. But perhaps he only half saw me, or half heard me. He fell flat out on the double bed in his room and said come here, love, come here and take my shoes off because I can’t. Mother’s in hospital. All right, all right, take my socks off. I still don’t know when he fell asleep, he was still rambling.

  Mother by herself in hospital with not even a rope to hang onto and giving birth in a position that was new to her, everyone celebrating the New Year, father flat out across his bed still talking in his sleep and I didn’t know what to do about it all. Ka, a religious concept in ancient Egypt. Kabardí, related to the Kabardines; kagú, a bird belonging to the pheasant species.