Sun Alley

by Cecilia Stefanescu

  In a second, they had all rushed into the room. Matilda saw him and an expression of surprise mixed with irony spread on her face. He knew her so well, with that severe appearance of hers when she caught him lying or when something bothered her. She would always throw him that superior, reserved and contemptuous look, as if she had said: ‘I know you too well! You act like a lizard, and that’s why I have to constantly be on guard, always on the watch and vigilant!’ Sometimes her look would say: ‘I’m tired of being on the watch! I wish you’d disappear, at least for a couple of seconds!’

  ‘See?’ she smirked. ‘You were afraid they wouldn’t come!’

  She seemed dreadful and terribly rude to him – she knew that he couldn’t have contradicted her and that she had put him in an awkward position – but he clenched his teeth and grinned back with restrained enthusiasm. He advanced with steady, firm steps toward the two guests and extended his hand to Emilia, who squeezed it coldly, then to Matei, who looked downright handsome now after having washed and arranged himself; he had, as his mother used to say, a commanding presence, and that meant a lot in a man.

  ‘I hope we arrived on time,’ Matei said mindfully.

  ‘You came at the perfect moment. Everything is ready; I just finished. And Sorin just woke up. He was tired after his adventure this morning.’

  The two had an identical smile on their lips, sympathetic and absent at the same time as if, although they had heard and understood Matilda’s words, they had missed something essential and stubbornly refused to find out what.

  ‘I’m glad you made it. I had the feeling I hadn’t explained clearly enough how to get here. Our house is a bit out of sight. It’s easy to get here, if you know the way, but you can easily get lost as well. That’s why…’

  Matilda was silently pushing the two guests toward the door that opened onto the garden. As if caught in an invisible net, they moved with small steps toward the place where the cooler air was waiting, along with the plastic chairs and table, nicely set with a tablecloth and matching napkins. Outside, Sorin’s lungs filled with a salty, choking breeze. He noticed the barbecue smoking unobtrusively, like an innuendo, to his right where the girls now played. So Matilda had really done everything: she had prepared the food, lit the fire, chilled the drinks, created a pleasant atmosphere. She always insisted that it was not just the taste of the food that was important, but also the place in which you ate it. Sorin found it a waste of time, but their friends seemed to appreciate Matilda’s culinary displays, albeit only out of politeness. Passing around drinks from two baroque trays like an experienced circus performer, she reacted to each compliment with false modesty, acting as if she had suddenly found herself on the red carpet under the spotlights.

  ‘Darling, can you play some music?’

  He started. Yet music was definitely missing: some elevating and dramatic music to improve the taste of the savoury dishes. He hadn’t looked at Emilia. Once in the open air, they had scattered around; Matei and Matilda remained grouped together and chatted in silence, so quietly that for a moment Sorin had the impression they were talking about him and the incident that afternoon. But he immediately realised it was very likely that Matei had no idea Emilia had brought him home, because he hadn’t mentioned a thing upon seeing him.

  He went inside the house, and while he was rummaging through the CDs they had brought from Bucharest, trying to pick one to Matilda’s liking, he watched her. She sat out of the way, gazing at the girls with a certain nostalgia as if, seeing them, she was watching her past self. But as he watched her, he started to suspect that all her self-restraint was nothing but subterfuge. That lost air and her tragic, suffering look were only dissimulating another secret, one she kept not only from the cheated husband, but also from the credulous lover. He realised – and the revelation was so striking his knees gave way under him from pain and excitement – that all her kind behaviour, the waiting, the amorous game, were nothing but stratagems to divert his attention. He felt the urge to take Matei aside and reveal his wife’s true character, to ask him if he knew who the man who had accompanied her that afternoon was. He had no doubt that he was infinitely more entitled to his fury at the unfaithful woman than her legitimate partner. He was infinitely more entitled and more legitimate.

  He slipped a CD through the thin slit and turned up the volume. Rumbling sounds, like an explosion, burst from the house. The windows rattled menacingly and everybody in the garden remained astounded for several seconds, not knowing what had happened. Within the framework of the window, Sorin watched them contemplatively, with a vacant gaze. But Emilia moved only slightly.

  All that evening, his only concern was to follow even her tiniest grimace. He hunted her everywhere, in all her gestures; he remained silent, on the watch, and in response, she did the same. The noise was provided by the girls, who had been granted the absolutely miraculous permission of not having to eat any more and jumping straight to dessert, and by Matei, who oscillated between paying compliments to Matilda and her unprecedented culinary gifts and making travel recommendations: ‘You must’ – he emphasised the word – ‘go to Balcic as well. The place is incredible.’ His mouth rounded affectedly. ‘And the prices likewise. And you have to visit the castle. Well, ‘castle’ is an overstatement – it’s more like a manor – but you can sense the good taste. That I guarantee.’

  However, despite the harmony ruling over that night, something unforeseen happened. In the great euphoria that had overcome them, the girls, transformed into genuine whirlwinds, encircled the whole table at full speed in a tornado involving leaves, napkins, and the smoke of the barbecue sizzling on the coals. Then, one of them – no one could really tell which one precisely – caught the bowl in which the gravy delicately floated and upturned it right in Emilia’s lap. The white linen skirt instantly absorbed the thick, orange liquid, and all other sounds died in the sauce now trickling from the edge of the table in a lazy river. Matilda rushed over at once with a napkin in her hand, blotting both Emilia’s skirt and the edge of the table that had now turned into a gutter. The men remained in abeyance, looking at the two women, one agitated and the other one sullen. Matilda banished the girls to the house, threatening that they would stay in their room until the next day. It was then that Emilia finally spoke:

  ‘Please, I beg you all, don’t overreact! It could happen to anyone! Any one of us could have spilled it. I don’t want you to punish the girls for such nonsense!’

  But Matilda was ironbound. ‘I told you two to calm down! I told them! This is totally unacceptable! Sorin, please, take them to their room at once! You will get two plates of food and dessert tomorrow! And that only if you behave!’

  The girls were perplexed, totally unable to even try to exculpate themselves. Despite the objections of the guests, who seemed to take the punishment harder than the punished, they disappeared inside the house. Their withdrawal created a void among the adults, throwing them into a sullen silence for several minutes. The hosts fussed in between the garden and the house, where Sorin had disappeared with two plates of food full to the brim. The barbecue coloured the air with a cheerful smell, in sharp contrast with the tense atmosphere, as it was periodically fed pieces of blood-red meat that roasted in no time.

  But when everyone was back, the first one to speak was Emilia. First she spoke about how much she loved children, and they all listened intently, not understanding what the point was, while her voice acquired dramatic modulations. Finally, she confessed that she had given up the joy of their having a child of their own, because she knew that the idea didn’t really appeal to Matei and because – here she made a longer pause and her voice started to tremble – she had always thought it wasn’t the right time, but to hear the voices of children and to feel their rustle around her was her greatest comfort.

  The silence around the table deepened. Sorin was the only one who was still paying attention and, although his eyes were riveted upon his plate, the sound of his fork scraping the white por
celain with a screech and his tense body showed that the words of his childhood friend hadn’t left him unmoved. Fortunately, nobody noticed him.

  ‘Your girls remind me of myself… when I was little.’

  She became thoughtful, and for the first time that evening, he looked at her lovingly and wanted to tell her that his twins reminded him of her, too; that this was one of the reasons he loved them so and couldn’t leave them. But he saw Matilda spying on him out of the corner of his eye, and he averted his gaze. She continued, ‘It was the most beautiful time. I felt inexpressibly happy. And I had reasons to be.’

  ‘What reasons could you have had at that age?’ Matei interrupted her.

  But Emilia went on, as if she hadn’t heard him. ‘I remember so clearly, is if it were yesterday. I can almost feel, on the tip of my tongue, the taste of the tea my mother used to make and of the homemade lemonade; I can smell her dishes in which she used to add lots of tomato sauce, I can hear her grumbling around the house in discontent; I can even hear my father, who left quite early on when I was only five, but still I can hear him even now; when I enter our house I can sense his cigarette smell… My father used to smoke two packs of cigarettes a day, and when you entered his room, the smoke was thick like fog. My mother would keep me away, saying I would fall sick if I sat there even a couple of minutes, and I believed her. That’s why my father is such a ghostlike memory, because he used to shut himself up in his room and only come out for dinner. He would drink a shot of plum brandy beforehand and then spoon in the food without any appetite. Then he would wait for my mother to finish eating, for that was the rule: my mother had to set her fork down, and after she leaned back, we would both thank her and wait for her to get up, after which we were allowed to get up ourselves. When this happened, my father would bolt to his room, his already lit cigarette in the corner of his mouth, driving my mother crazy. Then she would keep grumbling while washing the dishes, hissing through her clenched teeth words I barely understood.’

  Everybody was following her words. No one understood what she was getting at and where the thread of the confession had started. But she didn’t seem to mind them, as if the past was the only thing around her. But Sorin’s heart was pounding and a barely formed drop of sweat had appeared on his temple, ready to roll down his cheek. He couldn’t even tell if it was the fear of hearing her give herself away or the excitement of listening to her. It was as if he was listening to music from his youth, which now brought to him not only the pleasurable sounds but also the memories of that old, long-ago atmosphere. But she had detached herself from the world.

  ‘When my father left, I didn’t really miss him. On the contrary, I can say I was delighted, because suddenly, what had been his smoking room – that I was supposed to carefully avoid for my mother’s sake – became my room overnight. I took all my things there; I furnished it so you could no longer feel his presence. My mother stuffed the closets with lavender and put dry orange peels on top, so the smell was removed. We never mentioned him again, and I found a good place to hide from my mother’s anger, when it broke out God knows from what.’

  She sighed, then turned to Matilda. Her whole attention seemed concentrated upon the woman who listened with a politeness that barely masked the feeling of uneasiness on her face.

  ‘When a parent has a problem, the child unconsciously tries to solve it. Even if the parent doesn’t talk about these unpleasant situations, the child has some sort of radar, an inner eye that sees reality exactly as it is. That’s how it was with my mother and I. She never told me anything about her misfortunes, but the way in which she was bothered by any little thing that wasn’t in place, or by any deviation of mine from the common agenda, conveyed more tension than if she had honestly confessed what was burdening her. Well, now I know what was weighing her down, but it’s too late; I can’t help her anymore. But at that time, it made me withdraw into my own shell, and because I’ve never liked loneliness, I clung to my friends to lick my wounds.’

  Sorin pricked up his ears. Her words were heading his way, although in the beginning they had seemed to have another direction. He found solace in the thought that the woman who was so serenely narrating, detached from them and from their plentiful table on which the grilled pieces of meat grew colder and colder, was no longer the woman he knew. But she wasn’t finished.

  ‘Some were funny and kept me in good spirits, and I sensed others liked me. Needless to say, it was the latter I tried more to draw near to. The smart ones were nice, but I needed confidence, support, and they were too busy then, discovering the world, investigating, having fun together. So I took refuge – let’s say in the arms, though it wasn’t quite like that – in the arms of a boy I had accidentally met in the neighbourhood when coming home from school.’

  She looked at him, hypnotised.

  ‘Sorin knows him. He was a charmer and we used to say we didn’t like him, but I secretly found myself very attracted to his storytelling. And he always seemed to have time. Of course, everybody has time at that age, but some had to sleep in the afternoon, others had to read, to study or God knows what else. I could do what I wanted, and then there was this boy, who always answered the phone when I called. Not a single time did he refuse me when I called him.’

  ‘And what did you used to do?’

  Sorin’s voice broke the rhythm of the story and the silence around it.

  ‘At the beginning, we would talk…’ Emilia seemed to speak more carefully and slowly.

  ‘Well, memories…’ Matei blandly intervened, trying to put an end to the story. ‘You’re lucky to know each other since childhood.’

  ‘It isn’t exactly luck,’ Emilia interrupted, obscured by a shadow. ‘He wasn’t the only one I was talking to, if that’s what you mean. But at the beginning we just chatted. He was in the same situation family-wise, with a single mother who was away most of the time, and his house was almost always empty. Anyway, maybe we weren’t even that close until something very bad happened to me, something that hurt me terribly.’

  She stopped and swallowed hard as if she had struggled to stop her tears. But her eyes were dry, not mirroring a thing.

  ‘Emilia, let’s not monopolise the conversation,’ her husband softly cut in.

  ‘Oh, no, don’t worry – I am truly interested!’

  ‘So am I,’ Matilda mumbled, although she couldn’t have answered, had someone asked her, what exactly it was in Emilia’s story that interested her most.

  It was already dark outside, so they lit the candles that had been placed around – on the table, in the garden, around the barbecue. You could have said that the atmosphere was truly romantic if the warlike, quarrelsome spectre of uneasiness hadn’t descended upon the small congregation. They could have avoided it or pretended not to notice it, but suddenly, the darkness had given each of them the feeling of self-control and self-assurance. In the girls’ room the lights went dutifully out, while the candles flickered in the garden, their flames slowly wavering in the gentle breeze.

  ‘You were at the point when you were terribly hurt…’

  The voice had come out with a sarcastic tone, like in the old times.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, heaving a deep sigh. ‘That’s where I stopped. I apologise; there really is no point.’

  ‘In what?’

  ‘In my going on. The truth is that I have monopolised the conversation, you’re right.’ She leaned over to Matei and kissed his cheek.

  ‘Well, I hope you don’t mean that now you’re going to keep us guessing. You started to talk about your friend. Maybe I know him, too. I really found it interesting,’ Sal prompted.

  Emilia stubbornly shook her head. Matei jumped to her rescue, but the host’s insistence didn’t cease. He was determined to make her talk, because the unfinished story he had heard had revived inside him the terrible nausea he had felt in the afternoon. He knew he wouldn’t be able to stay with them much longer; he saw them hazily and their images had started to fade, creating conf
usion: Matilda’s face was standing now on Matei’s athletic body, sporting on its chest Emilia’s pair of round tits, with the twins’ two pairs of curious eyes blinking where the nipples should have been.

  ‘Come on, Emilia, don’t drive me crazy, tell us who it was!’ he cried, startling Matilda, who brought her hand to her chest and looked at her two guests with embarrassment. But he had already jumped to his feet threateningly, raging and flinging venom all around. ‘Spit it out!’

  ‘You know very well who it was!’ she shouted in a sharp voice.

  ‘I’m not talking about Harry! I’m talking about the one in the afternoon, the one who helped you bring me home!’

  He looked at Matilda and at Matei and sat back down. His face fell back into place, as if the one who had come out and shouted like a madman had withdrawn inside, exhausted.

  ‘Who?’ Matei asked, as if awoken from a deep slumber.

  It would have been wonderful to be able to erase that day and start it all over again. He was watching Emilia, who was confused and morose. Or maybe it would have been better if she admitted, forced by her husband, what she wouldn’t ever have confessed to her old childhood friend and lover. He listened and thought he could even hear the crammed flutter of her lungs fussing inside her.

  Emilia spoke to Matei. ‘I dropped by with George today.’

  ‘I see! Why? How come?’