An Unnecessary Woman

by Rabih Alameddine

  I won’t bore you with the how-to-calm-yourself-after-seeing-a-dead-body techniques at which all Lebanese become experts, although we are each adherents of different schools of practice. After reaching my apartment, I made a solemn vow that I would never complain about anything. I was alive—no matter what was happening, I was alive. The fact that I could breathe was a miracle. The fact that my eyes could see, the voluptuousness of seeing, that my heart beat, the joy of having a body. A miracle. I would not complain.

  Let’s get back to the lunch, shall we?

  My ex-husband’s family visited Hannah’s house for lunch—not the entire family, just Papa Lieutenant, Mama Lieutenant, our knight, and his two younger brothers, including the listless mosquito with malfunctioning proboscis, who was eleven then—a most bothersome, sullen eleven, I’m sure. He worshipped his eldest brother and despised Hannah, so his version of events, which he never tired of telling when we were married, was completely different from what she recorded in her diary. He always swore that the lunch was just that, that his brother had not proposed, had no idea that she thought he had, that no one in his family figured out that it was an asking-of-the-hand lunch, neither before nor after.

  In her diary entry of that day, Hannah reported that the lunch went swimmingly. “He shook my hand the minute he walked in and never left my side. We had delightful conversations, sometimes pleasant and fluffy, sometimes deep and serious. Everyone thought we looked good together, definitely well matched. We loved the appetizers, particularly the lentils and the cheeses; we didn’t care for the fattoush, which was too lemony, and we couldn’t have enough of the grilled meats. We ate at least a kilogram.”

  These passages were elaborately exuberant, the sentences overflowing, words leapfrogging one another, words jumping off the page into my lap. Each line ended with a loop that wanted to complete a full circle before flying off into the red-and-orange sunset at the other end of the room. “My soul was conquered by his right eye, praised and worshipped by his left.” The writing sounded nothing like her before or after—a personality anomaly, a desperate infatuation. “He is my throne and I am his crown.”

  In comparison, Héloïse sounds reasonable and sane.

  If, like me, you’d known Hannah before you came across this section of her journals, you’d have a hard time believing that this down-to-earth, sturdy, reliable woman could have written such absurdities. She always seemed to me like a woman who had studiously cut a clear path through the forest of life, but during this unfairly brief period she went off the path and into the thicket and its undergrowth.

  Bless her. She was always braver than I, and more adventurous.

  Yes, my ex-husband used to swear that his brother knew nothing, that had he proposed, he, my ex-husband, would have been the first to know, for he was the lieutenant’s confidant. The last bit I doubt. Just the idea that the self-involved imbecile could have been anyone’s confidant is too silly. The lieutenant didn’t propose to Hannah, of course. I don’t believe he could have. It wouldn’t have made any sense. But I also don’t believe that my ex-husband’s family could have left that lunch still clueless. The self-involved imbecile said that his family believed the lunch was to thank his brother for his kindness in walking Hannah home. Laying down such a spread as a thank-you for walking their daughter home? My ex-husband was an idiot, but I doubt his family was equally unperceptive. I believe Papa and Mama Lieutenant were stunned and confused, were impeccably mannered during the entire lunch, and waited till they were at home alone with their son before grilling him for explanations. I believe the supposed groom was as stunned and confused as they were. Poor man.

  The following day, Hannah’s father paid her knight’s father a visit. My ex-husband claimed that this was the first time anyone in his family had an inkling. Be that as it may, the meeting was friendly, each patriarch suggesting that a discussion with his progeny was in order before moving ahead.

  Over the next two weeks, the lieutenant visited Hannah four times, twice each week. Each time, he was supposed to tell his damsel that he didn’t intend to marry her. According to the imbecile, the lieutenant told her every time but she wouldn’t listen, didn’t know how to listen. I doubt that was the case. I think he tried to tell her but was too shy and the right opportunity didn’t present itself. He couldn’t bring himself to do it, didn’t want to hurt her. Her parents left them alone in the living room so they could talk, and talk they did, but he didn’t tell her.

  There is a picture of them sitting next to each other in the living room, not too close, on two different couches, she beaming for the camera, he not looking too morose. She’s in her best dress, her hair combed into a tight bun. He’s in his uniform, sans rifle, of course, a filter cigarette in his hand. He is definitely better looking than his brother: wide mouth, fuller lips, and, most important, curious, inviting eyes. There is something so young about him, so vulnerable and kind, like a child about to offer his favorite toy to a less fortunate boy who’s been eyeing it enviously.

  He befriended two of her brothers and confessed. They, according to the imbecile, promised to help him. Once the lieutenant told Hannah the truth, they would be there to comfort her. After the fourth visit, he took her father aside and confessed to him too. He couldn’t perpetuate the charade. He had been trying to tell Hannah but couldn’t seem to manage. While Hannah was thinking that her father and her betrothed were finalizing the matrimonial arrangements, her father was promising that he would break the news to his daughter, he would break her heart.

  Break her heart he would have. Need I tell you that she thought those two weeks were heavenly? Every detail was recorded, every imagined nuance. What he said, what he implied, what she inferred, what a future. His lips that spoke of love, his eyes that spoke volumes. She loved the shape of his fingers.

  No longer as taciturn, she even teased him. He had a habit of stroking his cigarette lighter, of flicking the top open, striking a flame, and shutting it. She laughed and accused him of being a budding pyromaniac.

  Break her heart her father would have, but he didn’t have to.

  It came to pass that on the day following their last meeting, a day that was to prove fateful but at the time was merely sorrowful, the lieutenant died not by himself in a car accident. The service he was in was hit by, or hit, a tram. Three people in the car died, including the driver. No one in the tram was hurt.

  Hannah was miserable and anguished, of course. She wept the fervor of her trembling grief. Her parents, her brothers, even her sisters-in-law all gathered around her bed and comforted her prone, inconsolable form. She mourned the loss of her husband, the loss of his future, of their future. She wept like a child for the children who were dead before they were conceived. She eulogized the three of them, two boys and a girl, the middle child, that they would not raise; the flowers from the garden of the little mountain house that they would not build; the stone pine grove, the olive trees, the peach and cherry orchards, and the vegetable plots on the land that they would not cultivate. She felt the intimate loss of who she was meant to become.

  “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter,” wrote Keats.

  No loss is felt more keenly than the loss of what might have been. No nostalgia hurts as much as nostalgia for things that never existed.

  Hannah cried, moaned, wailed, and didn’t care if her neighbors heard her—no, she wanted the neighbors, the world, to know her grief. She had finally discarded the last vestiges of her shyness, finally released the silt of immature youth. The Hannah I knew was born.

  She wrote that she cried and cried until she suddenly woke up, alert and full of vigor. If she was feeling so terrible, her new family must be devastated, walking the grounds of Hell. Her new family needed her. Within hours of hearing of the death, she gathered all her loved ones—her parents, her brothers, her sisters-in-law—and brought them to her betrothed’s house. They would help ease the lieutenant’s family’s pain in any way they could. Hannah would comf
ort his family and share their grief. She helped organize the funeral and the obsequies. She helped cook lunches and served coffee to the mourners. She did not return to the volunteer position at the hospital for more than six months, availing herself to the new family for whatever was needed.

  Needed she apparently was. My imbecile of an ex-husband hated Hannah, but his family adored her. She made sure of it. She became the ideal daughter-in-law. I’m not just talking about the days of mourning. She was the dutiful daughter-in-law all her life until she fell into her final fog. After the sadness dissipated, after the family recovered from the lieutenant’s passing, Hannah was still there. She visited at least three times a week, never refused an invitation, was present for all the holidays and important occasions. She never forgot a birthday, attended every new birth in the family. She knitted sweaters and baby blankets for nephews and nieces, and carefully considered which gift would be the most perfect for each relative.

  Whatever my ex-husband may have thought, his parents came to consider Hannah an integral part of their family. They included her. When they arrived at my stepfather’s house to ask for my hand, she came along. That was how we met, and by then I met a woman who would take me under her wing, who would become a friend and remain so after my husband left—I met a woman and not a shy girl. The transformation was complete.

  The rattling of the radiator reminds me that I’m cold. The witches are awake. Turning on the building’s heat for the first time this season may have been a group decision. Double, double, toil and trouble. One of them must have shivered, probably Marie-Thérèse. She feels the cold most. She’s calling for her cat, who doesn’t wish to return home this morning.

  The tock-tock of the ancient radiator is irksome, forces me out of my comfort seat. I have to bleed the damn thing.

  We had a warm autumn, but the season seems to have left us. Winter wheels in, picking up speed to make up for lost time.

  I should get dressed, but right now dressing feels like one of Hercules’s tasks. Over the nightgown of my abandoned sleep, over the robe of yesterday’s embarrassment, I put on my burgundy mohair coat, my habitual resort through the years on these early winter mornings. Because of the age of my apartment and its inadequate insulation, the winter winds can be felt as well as heard indoors. This is your life, Aaliya. You pace your home in nightgown and flocculent overcoat, in comfy slippers so old that your left foot, like a pervert, flashes its five toes with each step. I hunch over the radiator, letting the air out. I place a small aluminum pan under the pipe, turn the knob, and wait for the flat note of a hiss to fizzle out, wait for it to die.

  In one of the few Hemingway stories that I don’t find wholly insufferable, “Hills Like White Elephants,” a man and a woman in a café in Spain discuss the fact that she’s pregnant. The man uses the phrase “let the air out” to mean get rid of the baby. When I first read it, I couldn’t understand what Hemingway was saying. I kept wondering where the radiators were. I know the story is supposed to be clever, but it left me unmoved. I always wonder what the point is with Hemingway. Is the entire story about how difficult it is for the pair to communicate? I find that boring. I’m sure there is an epiphany at the end. Critics and college boys insist that the apparent text is just the tip of the iceberg. More like the tip of an ice cube, if you ask me.

  I consider it a shame that most contemporary American writing seems informed more by Hemingway, the hero of adolescent boys of all ages and genders, than by the sui generis genius of letters, Faulkner. A phalanx of books about boredom in the Midwest is lauded (where the Midwest lies is a source of constant puzzlement to me, somewhere near Iowa, I presume), as are books about unexplored angst in New Jersey or couples unable to communicate in Connecticut. It was Camus who asserted that American novelists are the only ones who think they need not be intellectuals.

  One of the things I have in common with the incredible Faulkner is that he didn’t like having his reading interrupted. He was dismissed from his job as a post office clerk at a university (a position his father obtained for him) because professors complained that the only way they could get their letters was by rummaging through the garbage cans, where unopened mailbags all too often ended up. He is said to have told his father that he wasn’t prepared to keep getting up to wait on customers at the window and to be beholden to “any son-of-a-bitch who had two cents to buy a stamp.”

  I didn’t like having my reading interrupted when I worked either, but I was beholden to every son of a bitch and his mother who walked into the bookstore, whether or not they had two cents to buy a book. I couldn’t afford any complaints. Most days I had few customers, and I spent my time sitting behind my desk reading. I was conscientious. I did earn my measly salary.

  I fear I’m digressing again.

  I try to get back to my reading, but my mind can’t seem to concentrate. I lay Microcosms aside. I must listen to something, music to clear the cobwebs, rattle the ant farm. I turn on the record player. I own a CD player—I broke down and bought one eight years ago, only to discover that everyone had moved on to digital music players—but most of my music is still on old albums. I choose Bruckner’s Symphony no. 3 conducted by Günter Wand, which I haven’t heard in a long time, probably three years.

  Here’s a charming tale about Bruckner that I love, though I believe it must be apocryphal. When he conducted the premiere of this same third symphony, the audience abhorred it. Personally, I can’t imagine why. Not only is it beautiful, but if it has a flaw, it may be that it’s a little melodramatic and kitschy, two attributes that audiences tend to love. But who can account for tastes? The audience booed violently and stormed out of the hall. I imagine the composer looking back in abject sorrow at the honeycomb of heads in the theater before exiting and locking himself in the conductor’s room, alone as he would always be. Forlorn and forsaken, Bruckner remained by himself until everyone had left the building, at which point he returned to the pit for a last farewell. He saw a young man still sitting in his seat, a young composer so overcome that he’d been unable to move a muscle since the symphony began, not a twitch. The young Mahler had been cemented in his seat for more than two hours, weeping.

  I am not a young Mahler. Today, the music doesn’t move me, and I do not find it soothing.

  Wave after wave of anxiety batters the sandy beaches of my nerves. Oh, that’s a bad metaphor if there ever was one. Just horrible.

  Nothing is working. Nothing in my life is working.

  Giants of literature, philosophy, and the arts have influenced my life, but what have I done with this life? I remain a speck in a tumultuous universe that has little concern for me. I am no more than dust, a mote—dust to dust. I am a blade of grass upon which the stormtrooper’s boot stomps.

  I had dreams, and they were not about ending up a speck. I didn’t dream of becoming a star, but I thought I might have a small nonspeaking role in a grand epic, an epic with a touch of artistic credentials. I didn’t dream of becoming a giant—I wasn’t that delusional or arrogant—but I wanted to be more than a speck, maybe a midget.

  I could have been a midget.

  All our dreams of glory are but manure in the end.

  I used to imagine that one day a writer would show up at my door, someone whose book I had translated, maybe the wonderful Danilo Kiš (The Encyclopedia of the Dead), before he died, of course. He the giant, me the speck with midget dreams, but he would come to thank me for caring about his work, or maybe Marguerite Yourcenar would knock on my door. I haven’t translated her, of course, because she wrote in French. And what French. In 1981 she was the first woman inducted into L’Académie française because of her impeccable language. She would appear to encourage me, to show solidarity, us against the world. I, like you, isolated myself. You in this apartment in this lovely but bitter city of Beirut, I on an island off the coast of Maine. You’re a forsaken, penniless translator who’s able to remain in your home by the grace of your landlord, Fadia, while I am an incredible writer
whose girlfriend, heir to the Frick fortune, owns the entire island. I am respected by the world while you’re mocked by it. Yet we have much in common.

  I had dreams. I would invite Danilo into my home. Please, come in. Share a cup of tea. Smoke a cigarette. He’s always smoking in his photos. Maybe I’d offer him a comb for his eternally unruly hair.

  But my dreams would shatter against my failures, if not my shabby furniture first. Look around. Sit, Danilo, sit. I’m sure you can appreciate a navy chenille armchair with frayed fringes and tattered tassels. Yes, that’s the shape of my derrière sculpted into the foam. Yes, that minisofa in the corner is real pleather, haha. A love seat, they call it. Marguerite and I often plop down on it together. Do sit and tell me about your work. Do you write in the morning?

  I’m such an idiot.

  I used to dream that one day I’d have friends over for dinner and we’d spend the entire evening in sparkling conversation about literature and art. Laughing and cavorting and making merry, Wildean wit and sassy, delightful repartee parried back and forth across the room. My salon would be the envy of the world, if only the world knew about it.

  In one of his poems, Brodsky suggested that “dreams spurn a skull that has been perforated.” A spectacularly thick drill bit has punctured mine.

  This morning will pass—at a sad and sluggish pace, but it will pass. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace.

  There’s no urgency in Marie-Thérèse’s cat call, which is growing louder but carries no trace of concern. Her cat has yet to return but she has made a habit of this. She disappears after she’s fed dinner, to who knows where, and returns sometime after the sun rises, but that’s an approximate schedule. She’s a Mediterranean cat, after all. I think Marie-Thérèse loves her cats, particularly the wayward Maysoura, more than she loves her children, and definitely more than she loved her departed husband.