An Unnecessary Woman

by Rabih Alameddine

  Can I possibly remember this, or is it a jigsaw that I’ve forced together from bits and pieces of how I think it went? I continue to drop the wooden pail into the brackish well of my memories. There was a meal. My mother concentrated on the food, on the plate. I don’t think she ate. The memory seems both real and unreal, reliable and tenuous, solid and insubstantial. I wasn’t even two when he died. I must have configured these images much later. Childhood is played out in a foreign language and our memory of it is a Constance Garnett translation.

  My features have blunted with the passage of time, my reflection only faintly resembles how I see myself. Gravity demands payback for the years my body has resisted it. Not just my breasts and posterior, but somewhere along the line the slightly swollen curves of my lips have straightened. I’ve also lost quite a few eyebrow hairs. They’re all white now. I’ve noticed the change in color before but not the sparseness. I used to have a pair of heavy lines for eyebrows. On the other hand, my melanin-deprived skin has accumulated a number of different colors. Two asymmetrical landlocked seas of purple and mouse gray spread under my eyes. A brindled barnacle clings next to my right ear. Temple veins and their tributaries are decidedly green.

  I’m willing to swear that the bone structure of my face has shifted.

  How can my breath hold out

  Against the wreckful siege of battering days

  When rocks impregnable are not so stout,

  Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?

  I hear Joumana puttering in her bathroom above. If she’s following her usual schedule, she’s washing up before making dinner.

  I must do something. I walk out of the bathroom to my reading room, to the compact disc player. I search for Chopin, find one of Richter’s recordings. My head slowly clears. Richter’s Chopin is inspiring.

  Sviatoslav Richter refused to give a concert if his pink plastic lobster was not with him. I used to think it was red—I read it somewhere, a red plastic lobster—but then I saw a picture of it. It certainly looked like a crustacean, oversized pincers, but not like a lobster, or at least not like any lobster I’d recognize. And it was pink, a rose pink, not red.

  “I find things confusing,” he said on film.

  In this film, Richter: The Enigma, he looked baffled and bewildered, befuddled by life. Bald, bony, ragged, and old, a face that couldn’t face the camera, a face that fully understood what had been lost, what had been given up. He looked real to me. I don’t know if he was a virgin, but he was a homosexual.

  Richter spoke to this plastic lobster and felt lost without his companion. If you talked to him without his lobster, he sounded autistic. When he played, though—when he played he could liquefy your soul. He walked on water—well, his fingers did—liquid supple and fluid smooth, running, dripping, flowing.

  “I do not like myself,” he said on film.

  Once more, I stand transfixed before the mirror in my bathroom. I take out a pair of scissors, shut my eyes for a moment, and cut off a handful of blue hair. As Richter works his mellifluous magic, I snip and weep, snip and weep. He tears my heart. I am a sentimental fool. I cut and cry. Blue hair falls around me, collecting in a wispy cloud on the floor, the halo of a saint encircling my feet.

  “For if a woman does not cover her head,” says Corinthians, “she might as well have her hair cut off.” Since no one reads anymore, Bible or otherwise, everyone assumes that Muslims invented the hijab. “Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head. But every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head—it is the same as having her head shaved.”

  Without my hair, I am no longer uncovered. I begin to sweep up the blue clippings on the floor. Slowly, methodically, each movement measured, each distracted, my mind in a fog, I clean and sweep.

  In Germany, cut hair used to be wrapped in a cloth that was then deposited in an elder tree days before the new moon. A similar ritual can be found among the Yukon Indians of Alaska. In Morocco, women hang their hair clippings on a tree growing on or near the grave of a wonder-working saint to protect themselves against headaches. In Saudi Arabia and Egypt, they stow the fallen hair away, in a kerchief in a drawer. I sweep it all into the dustpan and dump it in the garbage.

  My hair is sheared, lopped off to be exact. It is now white, the frost of old age. I don’t know whether I look like a cancer patient, a Red Brigade terrorist from the seventies, or an avant-garde artist, but I do look new. Since I only used scissors my hair is uneven and choppy. No, I don’t look like any of the above. I look like a Catholic postulant or a novitiate of some obscure monastic order.

  I feel lighter, though I know it’s unreasonable to feel so. It’s only hair.

  The albatross fell off, and sank

  Like lead into the sea.

  This evening I will contemplate the world from my bathtub. I’ll soak today away. I’m going to wash my mother right out of my hair. Wash her out, dry her out, push her our, fly her out, cancel her and let her go. I will fill the tub to the brim with cleansing water, rattle the pipes, conduct the Schoenberg symphony of glockenspiels once more. I’ll light a couple of candles for mood. I can’t retrieve those in the maid’s room, so I’ll make do with a couple of stubby ones lying around the bathroom, ugly and functional. Fire and water, I’ll end up with baptism, cleansing, and rejoicing all around.

  I will shorten the hours of this evening, for I am tired. I will read, though. I am still more or less sane because of my evening reading.

  I will continue with Microcosms this evening.

  I sit by the window in my living room. The sky puts on its darkening blue coat. My socked feet join me on the couch, my hands interlock around my knees. Even though I rubbed it dry with my good towel after the bath, my hair still feels wet. Phantom hair syndrome: I touch my scalp and my hair feels dry, but a minute after my hand grasps its partner around my knees, the sensation of wetness returns.

  Out my window, all I see is a small section of my street, a cropped rectangle of the building across the way, and my lonesome lamppost. When I was a little girl I wished for a window that would overlook all of Beirut and its universe. Once I was married and in this apartment, my dreams shrank to more reasonable dimensions; I wished for a window on a higher floor, maybe the fourth—Fadia’s apartment instead of mine on the second—wished for a marginally more elevated, slightly more expansive view. These days I wish only that a Finnish or maybe Chinese company would invent some inexpensive utensil to clean the city grime off the outside of my window without my having to strain my back.

  I should reread Johnson’s The Vanity of Human Wishes and be admonished once again.

  It is fitting that I’m allowed only a glimpse of Beirut’s vista through my window, a thread of a sliver of a slice of a pie. Nostalgists insist on their revisionist vision of a hospitable, accepting city—a peaceable kingdom where all faiths and ethnicities were welcome, a Noah’s ark where beasts of every stripe felt at ease and unthreatened. Noah, however, was a son of a bitch of a captain who ran a very tight ship. Only pairs of the best and the brightest were allowed to climb the plank—perpetuate the species, repopulate the planet, and all that Nazi nonsense.

  Would Noah have allowed a lesbian zebra aboard, an unmarried hedgehog, a limping lemur? Methinks not.

  Never has my city been welcoming of the unpaired or the impaired.

  I never cared for the story of Noah or Edward Hicks’s stilted paintings of Stepford animals.

  From what I read tonight in Microcosms: “Why so much pity for the murderers who came after and none for those before, drowned like rats? He should have known that together with every being—man or beast—evil entered the Ark.”

  Say what you will about the God of Israel, but consistency is not His forte. He hasn’t been fair to my kind. The One God is a Nazi.

  I sit in the dark. And it would be hard to figure out

  which is worse: the dark inside, or the darkness out.

  I
must try to sleep tonight. I must.

  Of course I don’t sleep. I don’t recall the entire night’s affair, so I may have dozed off a bit, my usual fare. I bend down to pull on woolen socks and feel every vertebra crack in order as if in a roll call: C1, here; C3, present; T4, yes; L5, I’m here; coccyx, ouch, ouch. All that’s missing is a reveille-playing bugle.

  It is much too cold. A chilly tremor runs through my shoulders, chasing away any inclination to sluggishness. I scratch my scalp. Still shorn. I’m not sure I can risk the bathroom mirror this morning.

  A night of storms and heavy rain, of bumps and sounds in the dark. I heard floods and sirens outside. Comfortably tucked under three blankets, I heard a ghoul scratch his fingernails on the windowpane, a militiaman fire his machine gun into street puddles. Above me, I heard Joumana murder someone, probably her husband, and drag the corpse around the house in circles over and over while hitting the skull with a Tefal frying pan. Nothing else could have made those night noises.

  I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were . . . warmer.

  I wear my robe over my nightgown and top it off with the burgundy mohair overcoat. I trudge to the kitchen to begin my early morning tea ritual. The apartment smells of damp and rain. The radiators diffuse sputtering heat in spurts. Indoor winter winds interrogate my ankles.

  I’m hesitating again about the new project. The novel 2666, incomplete though it may be, is too big, and this morning it interests me less. However, I’m not sure I have enough time to come up with a new book to translate this late in the game unless I pick something short and easy. Can I risk missing the rite of beginning a translation on the first of January? I wonder if I’m able to break my own rules. The rules are arbitrary. I recognize that, but I also know that they make my life work; my rules get me through the day. If I have to, I can begin the translation on another date and the world will not reverse on its axis. I’ll not lose any more sleep than I already do if I postpone. Still, I prefer to stick to what I know, creature of habit and all that.

  Maybe my epiphany is that I can begin a translation in the second week of January this time. Maybe this epiphany will excite me after I have my tea.

  I light the flame under the kettle.

  I decide that I must make a decision this morning about which book to work with. Uncertainty is unsettling.

  Whispery light begins to disperse the shadowy forms outside my windows. A garbage truck leaves my street and takes its howling ruckus with it. Nothing to be heard now but the childish pitter-patter of rain. The streetlamp flickers its bulb in a short tantrum, gathering a blush of carnation pink and russet before turning off for the day. The air in the kitchen still feels somber and damp. I carry my tea to the reading room, sit in my armchair, and drape the quilt over my legs under the mohair coat.

  My doorbell rings and I am disoriented. I must have fallen asleep in my chair. How long has it been since that happened? I can’t tell what time it is, can’t read the clock without my eyeglasses. The light is high. Eight o’clock? The doorbell buzzes once more. I put on my glasses. The cup remains on the side table, next to the vase and the seven books of the Muallaqat, the tea untouched and obviously cold, not a wisp of steam rising from its surface. I’ll not open the door. Not this time. I’ll not let the world in. Is this going to be a daily ritual? Let’s disturb Aaliya’s morning, jumble and upend it. Tous les matins du monde.

  Whoever is outside knocks on my door, an insistent knock. It’s not my half brother the eldest, though. This knock is well mannered.

  “Aaliya,” I hear Joumana’s muffled voice call from outside. There is urgency to her call. “Open up, please!”

  I jump out of my chair—well, what would be considered a jump at my age. My knee buckles, almost sending me sprawling across the carpet. I steady myself at the reading room’s door. My hand leans against the jamb and I find myself face-to-face with the unframed circular mirror. I avert my eyes, of course, but I make a decision to clean it before the day is done, at least dust it off.

  “She must be inside,” Marie-Thérèse says. “I didn’t hear her leave this morning. I’d know if she did.”

  I rush to the door. I hear Fadia on the stairs, coming from below, not above. The world is upside down today, topsy-turvy.

  “I’ve shut off the water,” says Fadia, the loudest of all. She has yet to reach my landing. I hear the hurried stomping of her clogs approaching.

  “Aaliya!” she screams just as I open the door. My face encounters the full force of her voice, and of December’s cold.

  The three wet witches jostle into my foyer, they speak together, all at the same time, high-pitched Disney-like chatter, and I’m flummoxed and confused. If Fadia’s housedress swept the floor the last time she was here, today her purple one mops it. The hem is so damp she looks as if she’s just waded out of a river. But I hear the word flood, and just above the bridge of my nose, just under the skin, I feel a nerve snap. A lump grows in my throat, an anchor weighs down my heart. I feel my ears shut off. I do not wish to hear.

  Haphazardly soggy, the witches surround me, orbit me like planets on Dexedrine, talking, talking, talking. A water pipe—maid’s bathroom upstairs in Joumana’s apartment—flood—no danger anymore—plumber’s been called—they hope I don’t have anything valuable stored in my maid’s room.

  Anything valuable? Valuable? My crates, my crates and crates, my life—they know nothing of that.

  I run—yes, run—through the kitchen to the maid’s bathroom. I smell the damp before I open the door, like a woolen sweater in the rain, like the smell of Nancy’s damp pink sweater draped over the top of the heater, steaming, I’m steaming. Nausea punches my stomach from inside and out. The knob doesn’t turn all the way on the first try because my hands are too clammy. I swing the door open and witness the damage. The stink assaults me physically, and I recoil and stagger a step; the stench wallops me, bashes my nose, sour, musty, my mother. My heart behaves strangely, wishing to object. I feel an urge to regurgitate.

  Hail horrors, hail

  Infernal world! and thou, profoundest Hell.

  My neighbors sidle up to me, too close.

  There is some water on the floor, but not too much. Most of what has passed through the maid’s bathroom continued on its journey toward the swale of the drain. The water that insisted on remaining, though, chose to do so among my papers. Every crate is wet.

  There’s no longer any need to panic. It is done.

  If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well

  It were done quickly.

  It was most certainly quick.

  On wobbly legs and exhausted knees, I walk through to the maid’s room. There is no hope. Dark though the maid’s room is, I need not see. The smell of water damage is acute. The seven mouths of the Nile have poured their wares in here. My soul screams, my voice is mute. I am now destitute.

  Who among the angels will hear me if I cry? I stand in the dank and the dark, amid my wasted life, not knowing what to do, unable to make any decision, and weep. My hopes were extinguished a long while ago, and now any tinder of dignity follows suit. Whatever remains of my self-worth seeps out of me, flows out of me, and follows the water down the drain.

  Everything has gone and left me and I don’t know what to do.

  I face a battle that has been over for a long time. I accept defeat with no white flag to wave, with no strength even to unsheathe my sword.

  Into the valley of Death

  Rode the six hundred.

  Degradation is my intimate. Like Job’s, my soul is weary of my life. Snot falls from my nostrils; I wipe it and the tears with the sleeve of my mohair coat—the sleeve of my tattered, unwearable coat.

  I don’t know how much the three witches can see, but I’m horrified that they know I’m crying, which makes me cry more, and louder.

  My soul is fate’s chew toy. My destiny pursues me like an experienced tracker, like a malevolent hunter, bites me and won’t let go. What I thought I left behind
I find again. I’ll always be a failure, then, now, and forever. Fail again. Fail worse. I witness my life’s collapse.

  Shadow that hell unto me.

  Cursed is this world and cursed is all that is in this world. Cursed is this age of relentless humiliation and slapstick. Here’s your damn epiphany.

  The women surround me once more, lead me by my hands and elbows out into the light. One of them, probably Marie-Thérèse, the shortest, gently pulls on my arm, forcing me to bend a bit, and wipes my face with a tissue—a tissue moist with sanitizer gel. She must have one of those miniature antibacterial bottles on her person at all times. My hands, of their own accord, escape the women’s clutches and dive into the coat’s pockets. The only thing in my pockets is a bent pair of reading glasses.

  My eyes, with a will of their own, stare ahead, concentrate on the small pan I put under the radiator when I let the air out. A rusty water drop hangs on the pipe above it, waiting patiently to join its sisters who have stained the aluminum.

  The kitchen is noisy, the city drawing in its morning breaths, horns and traffic and rain on the street, and Joumana talking softly, talking to me.

  “What’s in the boxes?” She repeats the question a few times in response to my silence. “We should get them out of there and see what we can salvage.”

  How can I explain my esoteric vocation, my furtive life?

  This is the private source of meaning in my life.

  “Translations,” I say. “I’m a translator.” I hesitate. What I said doesn’t ring true in my ears. I sound like a liar. “I was,” I add. My heart feels too exhausted to beat. “I was a translator.”