‘It worked out, which means I’ll have to go back again in a week. When can you join me?’
‘Not right now, I can’t leave Mama so soon.’ She sighed. ‘It’s so confusing, all the estate duties, the legal documents. I have to go to the notary public tomorrow, there are all kinds of paperwork to sign. Will you come with me?’
‘No, I don’t think I can, Father wants me to drive him to the oculist tomorrow.’
‘But I can’t go alone. I suppose I’ll ask Uncle Hani if he can come with me, or perhaps the Pasha will send someone.’ She worried about it for a minute. ‘Well at least you’ll be here all week, you’ll be here when Tarek has his tonsils removed. It was all set for last week but of course we put it off because of Papa…We can reschedule the operation for Tuesday, at the Dokki Clinic. We have to be there early, at seven. Can you pick us up at six-thirty?’
‘It would take too long for me to drive over to Zamalek from Garden City to fetch you. What time is the operation scheduled for? Nine? Why don’t I meet you there just before nine?’
The telephone rang and Khadra called Yussef to the phone. He got up to take the call in the study. He came back in a few moments.
‘That was Mother. She was reminding me not to be late, some people are coming over for dinner tonight.’
‘Oh. I was hoping you’d stay. There’s so much we need to talk about. Can’t you stay with me for a little while?’
She went to him and put her arms around his neck, rubbing the top of her head against his chin. She felt him stiffen and looked up. She could see that he distrusted her gesture; she was rarely spontaneously affectionate with him. Then she caught the glimmer of triumph in his eyes. He was thinking that she needed him, now that she was feeling alone and helpless. He drew her closer. But she had read his hesitation too clearly. She dropped her arms and pulled away. She would take no comfort in his staying now, and she lacked the will to play games just to win a point.
‘You’d better go, Tante Zeina’s expecting you.’
‘All right.’ He hesitated, as if he realized that there was more at stake in his leaving than he thought. It was not like Yussef to be perceptive, Gigi knew. He shrugged it off. ‘Look, I stopped by Tarek’s room to give him a kiss. He was sleeping, he didn’t even wake up. Tell him I’ll see you both when you come for lunch on Friday, okay?’
Gigi sat back down on the sofa in the near dark. Sometimes it takes an almost imperceptible shift in the kaleidoscope for the pattern to come into focus. Sometimes all it takes is the removal of one sliver of colored shapes for the entire image to change. It seemed that in her life, endings and beginnings were marked not with a bang, but with a whimper. But this time, at least, she had not merely floated along like a leaf downstream. This time she had taken a decision.
‘I swear someone must have switched the doves in the cage at your wedding and replaced them with hawks.’ Tante Zohra shook her head. It was the fortieth day of Papa’s passing away. The fortieth day marked a milestone and the visits to the bereaved were renewed. Tante Zohra had been to visit Mama and had asked Gigi to drive her home. Her purpose, it soon became clear, was to sound out Gigi on her estrangement from Yussef.
‘Listen, child, no man is perfect. His parents are not easy to get along with, I grant you that, but a little patience, a little diplomacy…Yussef still cares for you. I don’t understand why you can’t get your way with him. Pretty as you are, clever as you are, you should have him eating out of your hand. Why, Makhlouf, Allah rest his soul, was the biggest bully imaginable when I married him. But I learned how to handle him. A woman should be supple!’
Gigi pulled up in front of her aunt’s building. ‘Here we are, Tante Zohra.’
‘Come up with me and have a cup of tea. No, Gigi, I insist.’
Tante Zohra held off the subject until they were comfortably installed in her salon and she had ordered tea.
‘Now, Gigi, what’s this all about? I feel responsible, in a way, since I was the one who brought the two of you together.’
‘Well then, Tante Zohra, perhaps you could answer a question for me.’ Gigi wrapped and unwrapped her key chain around her finger. ‘Why did Yussef marry me? Was it his father’s idea?’
‘What a question! Of course his father thought it would be a good idea for him to get engaged before he went back to England. To forestall the possibility that he might make an unsuitable match out there, as so many young men do. And of course you were at the top of the list of girls his parents suggested to him. But after that first meeting we arranged between you, he wasn’t interested in seeing anyone else, that’s how keen on you he was. And I’m sure that after you were married –’
‘No. He didn’t love me.’
‘I can’t believe that, Gigi. Why, you were adorable! I remember you at your wedding as if it were yesterday. Everyone thought you looked so right together. If I believed in the evil eye!’ She sighed. ‘And afterwards, everything seemed normal. I mean, you had Tarek so quickly –’
‘Oh, Tante Zohra, everything was normal that way, Yussef made sure of that right away. That was part of the problem, he never gave me a chance to get used to him first – he never cared how I felt, he just –’
‘He just what, child?’
‘He never – he never courted me.’
Tante Zohra threw her hands up in exasperation. ‘That’s the problem with your generation! You grow up filling your heads with romantic nonsense!’ She took a long sip of her tea. ‘Your father – Allah rest his soul – he spoiled you, you know. Sheltered you too much and let you have unreasonable expectations.’
‘I know.’
Tante Zohra hesitated. ‘Gigi, did you ever think that Yussef might only have been reacting to your – coldness? I hear his side of the story, too, you know, through Zeina. I’m not the only one.’
Gigi looked down at her lap. Tante Zohra patted her knee. ‘All I’m saying is, there’s usually some blame on both sides. But never mind that.’ She took another sip of her tea. ‘Gigi, trust me, there’s no perfect marriage. Most young brides get caught up in their new homes, then their babies; and the routine takes over and the obligations pile up. That’s what life is all about. That’s all there is.’
‘I know. It’s not enough. I thought I could make a fresh start with Yussef, by playing house, doing all those things. But it wouldn’t work. It’s not enough.’
Tante Zohra leaned back on the sofa and sighed. A long sigh. ‘No, I can see that. It wasn’t enough for my Gina, either. It always had to be the grand passion. But that doesn’t last. Gina found that out.’ She shook her head. ‘But you won’t see that now. I know when it’s no use arguing. What are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to go to the Pasha and ask him to speak to Yussef about a divorce.’
‘Well, a separation is a first step. But I warn you, Gigi, Yussef won’t divorce you.’
‘Why not? It’s not as if he really cares for me.’
‘He does, in his own way. And in any case, child, that has nothing to do with it.’
Gigi got up. ‘I have to go now, Tante Zohra.’
‘All right, dear. But wait a minute, I need to give you a check to drop off at Nellie Sirry’s, it’s a donation for an orphanage, she’s on the board. She lives one street down from you. You don’t mind, do you?’
‘I’d be glad to, Tante Zohra, it’s right on my way.’
‘Do you remember her oldest son? Sharif? He had an eye on you for years, but Kamal Zeitouni had more or less put the word about that you were spoken for. Just like him to be so manipulative: to drive away the other suitors who were interested in you while not committing Yussef. Why, if the Sirry boy knew you were free, even now – but listen to me, matchmaking already, and you’re not even separated, let alone divorced! You’d think I would have learned my lesson and minded my own business!’
Driving back from Tante Zohra’s, Gigi felt a new understanding and an odd sort of sympathy for Yussef. In this arranged marriage he had been fo
llowing his parents’ wishes, just as he always did – in a way, just as she had, herself. If he had been callous and egotistic towards her, it was the way he had been raised. If she had not succeeded in changing him, in ‘getting him to eat out of her hand’, as Tante Zohra would have expected, it was because she had not tried. She hoped the divorce would be an amicable one, for Tarek’s sake; she had no intention of piling the blame on Yussef in order to paint herself in the colors of the victim.
This sort of reasoning, Gigi knew, baffled Mama: she found it wrong-headed and naive. She disapproved of the idea of divorce, but she realized that Gigi, normally pliable and vacillating, was for once utterly and implacably determined. If it must come to a divorce, then, Mama felt, it should be ‘À la guerre comme à la guerre’, and the public opinion campaign should be launched with no holds barred. Gigi dreaded her mother’s interference; having a loaded gun on your side was a liability when it could so easily be turned and used against you by your adversary. She tried her best to keep Mama from ratcheting up the rhetoric. Somewhat to her surprise she realized that, with Papa gone, her mother was less formidable.
‘Come on in, Gigi.’ The Pasha led the way into his bedroom and sank into a comfortable club chair, as was his custom at this time in the afternoon. Gigi had dropped by for lunch, as she often did lately. In the evenings now the Cairo House teemed with people from the party. The only time to catch a few moments in private with her uncle was to come by at lunch-time. He was always glad to see her.
‘A face as pretty as yours across the table always gives me an appetite,’ he would say. Gigi smiled at her uncle’s old-fashioned gallantry; a bon mot was as natural to him as breathing.
‘Are you going back to work this afternoon?’ the Pasha asked as he lit a cigar. Gigi had recently started working in the international department of the El-Ahram newspaper, as a news analyst and translator. It helped to occupy her time, what with Tarek in kindergarten all morning and Mama and his nanny all too ready to take care of him in the afternoons. The El-Ahram building was not far from her uncle’s house in Garden City, and it always pleased him when she dropped in for lunch.
‘No, I’m all done for today.’ She plunged ahead. ‘There’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you. Things aren’t going well between me and Yussef. I mean we’ve actually been separated for the past few months. When he’s not on business trips for his father he lives with his mother, and Tarek and I are at home at Mama’s.’
Gigi hesitated to continue. Since the Pasha’s reentry into the political arena, Kamal Zeitouni had become one of his most important allies. He was running for a seat in the National Assembly under the new party banner, and was managing editor of the party newspaper. His contacts in Saudi Arabia were also valuable.
‘Listen, Gigi,’ the Pasha spoke deliberately, as if he read her mind, ‘I have some idea about the problems you’ve been having with Yussef lately. In fact Kamal Zeitouni complained to me the other day about the situation. I told him I needed to hear your side of the story. I told him that, your father being dead, you’re in the position of my daughter. I want you to tell me the whole story.’
‘It’s not just these past few months. From the beginning it was a mistake, we never had a real marriage. But I kept trying, because of Tarek. And because of Papa. Now that he’s gone, there’s no point in going on any longer. Uncle, I want a divorce.’
‘I need you to level with me, Gigi. Is there someone else?’
‘No!’
‘Good.’ He nodded. ‘Then we can take our time, negotiate. You understand that I can get Yussef to divorce you tomorrow, if he thought you were involved with someone else. But you would pay a very high price. You would lose everything, including your reputation.’
‘All I want is Tarek.’
‘That’s just the point. If we keep this amicable, you get custody of Tarek; Yussef could visit him whenever he wanted. Once he turns ten, custody reverts to his father, but long before then, you’d have remarried. Trust me on this – young as you are, pretty as you are – you’ll remarry in no time.’ He smiled as Gigi tried to protest. She realized he had a point. Her chances of making a good match now, even as a divorcee, were much better in the new political climate of the country than they had been in the days when she was a young girl under sequestration. These days everyone seemed to want to be associated with the Pasha and the family again.
‘When you remarry,’ the Pasha continued, ‘you would automatically lose custody. Yussef wouldn’t let you take his son to live in a stranger’s house. But he might agree to let your mother keep him; you could work out some kind of arrangement where you could see Tarek every day but still keep up appearances. Take your cousin Nevine, for instance; when she remarried she took an apartment in her father’s building in Zamalek, and her son lives with his maternal grandfather, officially, but Nevine can see him all day if she wants to, and her ex-husband has no problem with that. But it was an amicable divorce, and they’re cousins, of course.’ He puffed on his cigar. ‘The main thing is to be patient. We can’t afford to put too much pressure on Yussef to divorce you right away because if he gets his back up – or his father does – it can get ugly. You have no grounds for a divorce that will stand up in court. This has to be done by persuasion. I’ll speak to Kamal Zeitouni. You and Yussef are already separated, for all intents and purposes. Now it can be official. But Gigi – be careful. You’re still a married woman. You can’t afford even a breath of scandal.’
10
Madame Hélène
‘Gigi, I’m worried about Madame Hélène. It’s been months since we’ve heard from her. Not since Papa’s fortieth.’
Ever since Gigi had left for England, Madame Hélène often went to stay in her apartment downtown, for weeks, even months, at a time. She didn’t have a telephone in the apartment, so she couldn’t be reached, but she would call from time to time. It was unusual for her not to get in touch for so long. Gigi realized that she had been so unsettled by turmoil in her own life that she had not kept track of the time that had elapsed since Madame Hélène last called.
‘I sent Ibrahim the doorkeeper over this morning with a message,’ Mama continued. ‘Just to make sure that she wasn’t ill or in need of something. He came back a while ago. He said he tried ringing the doorbell for a long time, but no one answered. What’s really worrying me is that he said the apartment door was sealed with wax. He tried to get some information from the doorkeeper but it was a new man who didn’t seem to know who she was. All he knew was that when he was hired the apartment was empty and had been sealed by the superintendent of the building.’
‘I don’t understand it,’ Gigi shook her head. ‘She would never leave just like that without letting us know. And where would she go? She always used to say that if she were seriously ill or dying, she would go to the Italian Hospital in Abassia.’ Madame Hélène had often mentioned that they would take care of her there because her husband’s family had been major benefactors of the hospital for generations. She had said to ask under her married name, Fernandini. ‘I’ll go over there right now.’ Gigi picked up her car keys.
Guilt is a strange thing. All the while she was driving to the hospital Gigi kept remembering the exquisite lace collar Madame Hélène had made by hand for her thirteenth birthday, a lace collar the governess must have pored over for hours with her weak, boiled-egg eyes. It had been all she had to offer, a labor of love. She expected Gigi to wear the lace collar over a velvet dress, the way she had in years past. But Gigi was thirteen, and in the past year the last vestige of the little girl had given way to the self-conscious teenager. For her birthday she wanted to dress like other girls her age, in a bright sweater and matching, short skirt that had been Gina’s present from a trip to Europe. Guilt is a subjective thing. For some of us it is not breaking great commandments but small acts of thoughtlessness that continue to haunt us.
For some reason an image came to her mind, an image of Madame Hélène watching a soccer match on te
levision with Papa. Madame Hélène was short-sighted to the point of near-blindness and had not the first idea of how the game was played, but she had heard that the goalkeeper for the red-shirted Ahli team, Aldo, was Italian, like her dear departed husband. From that day forward she sat through every match in which Aldo played. Papa would be hunched forward in concentration, clutching his pipe till his knuckles turned white, and every time there was a burst of excitement from the commentator Madame Hélène would pester him with: ‘C’est Aldo, Monsieur Shamel?’ He would answer patiently that it wasn’t Aldo, Aldo was the goalie.
Gigi had only a vague idea where the Italian Hospital was, and got quite lost trying to find it. By the time she managed to get there it was past nine o’clock at night. The hospital was a large, turn-of-the-century building surrounded by a pleasant garden of overgrown magnolias. It took Gigi a while to rouse the night guardian, then to be taken to the head nurse.
‘Was she a relative of yours?’ the Italian nurse in her crisp white cap asked as she ran her finger down the list of names.
‘No, my governess. But she raised me, she was family.’
‘Fernandini, Fernandini. No, there’s no one here by that name.’
‘Please check under her maiden name then. Dumellier. Hélène Dumellier. Although I’m sure she would have used her married name.’
‘No Dumellier either.’
‘She has to be here. I mean, she has nowhere else to go.’
‘Wouldn’t she have called you?’
‘Of course. Unless she were too sick, or confused.’
‘We certainly have plenty of senile old women here. Some of them may not know their own names, but there’s no one here who’s not accounted for in the records.’
‘Are any of them French? I don’t know how old she is exactly but she must be over eighty. She has bulging blue eyes and long silver hair that she wears in a bun rolled in the back. She has a bit of a humped back and she smoked quite a lot, so her teeth are very stained, but she still has most of them.’
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