The Disoriented

by Amin Maalouf

  When I opened my eyes, he would note some time later, Sémi was no longer next to me. I turned on the bedside lamp and looked at my watch. It was not yet seven o’clock. I had only dozed off for a few minutes. I sat up in bed, bare-chested, my mind reeling.

  It was bound to happen!

  Having eaten of the offered fruit, we longed for the forbidden fruit.

  Having made love with permission, we made love without it.

  Does this mean that my relationship with Sémi is not the digression whose end was scheduled the moment it began? Yes, it is, it cannot be anything else, in my mind, or in hers. But if an affair is to be, it must run its course. Not just its mature years, but its childhood and its adolescence, even if these are in the wrong order. It must find its own alchemy, its own alloy of reason and folly, passion and disinterest, emotion and humour, intimacy and distance, word and flesh.

  What matters, for the lovers, is the ability to safeguard the memory of their affair as though it were a shared journey.

  Journeys often offer the opportunity to build lasting friendships with strangers who were travelling companions. It should be possible to remember our amorous adventures in a similar frame of mind. I’m not suggesting the lovers meet up on the anniversary of their first encounter to celebrate and recall shared moments, but they should do what they can to overcome the bitterness of separation so that, for the rest of their lives, they can fondly remember this “journey.”

  It is a word that fits perfectly with my circumstances since I came back to my native land. I am on a romantic journey with Sémi as my companion. A journey through time rather than space. In theory, I came back to reconnect with the land of my youth, but I am not really looking at the country, I am searching for the traces of my youth. I’m oblivious to the things, the people I did not know in my former life. I am not seeking to learn anything, to relearn anything, to discover anything. I am simply trying to recover what was already familiar to me. I am looking for traces, vestiges, remnants. Everything new here is like an unwelcome intrusion in my dream, an insult to memory, an act of aggression.

  This is not a boast, in fact I’m willing to acknowledge it as a weakness. But, from the very first day, this is how I perceived this journey. Those things I recognize, I see in technicolour; everything else is a dull grey.

  As a result, for as long as I am on this journey, there can be no more desirable woman than Sémi. But I feel sure that, when I go back to Paris, she will suddenly seem very distant. And Dolores will once again fill my every thought, whereas while I’m here, I have to make an effort to think of her.

  -

  5

  An hour after their impromptu lovemaking, Sémiramis called Adam and suggested they go back to see Mourad’s widow. Her guest was all the more eager to agree since he wanted to talk to Tania about the swift progress of the planned reunion.

  The two lovers made not the slightest allusion to what had just happened. Neither on the phone nor while they drove.

  This time, the widow was alone. The only other person, a woman in mourning black, doubtless a neighbour or a relative, left the moment the two friends arrived.

  Tania explained that the house had not been empty that day either, that she had to resort to subterfuge to persuade the last visitors to leave.

  “It’s taken me some time to realize, but condolence in our culture is designed to exhaust, to leave the bereaved so shattered they no longer have the energy to think about their grief.”

  “If it works, so much the better,” Adam said.

  “Oh, it works. I am emotionally numbed. I see everything, hear everything, but I feel nothing.”

  Although she may have been exhausted, and “numbed,” she seemed wired, as though under the effect of a powerful stimulant. Her gestures were a little more brusque, her smiles appeared and faded more quickly than usual.

  She was sitting in the small salon where, long ago, they had held the “farewell evening” with Naïm, before he emigrated with his family. Seeing her friends arrive, she made to get up, but they stopped her, and, as they had on their previous visit, they both bent and kissed her.

  Adam sat down next to her and in a fraternal gesture put an arm around her shoulder. She tilted her head back, closed her eyes, and lay very still. Sémiramis had taken a chair at the far end of the room, as though to give them space to savour this moment of closeness and reconciliation.

  “When you want to go to bed, just tell us,” Adam whispered.

  “Yes, just tell us, we’re all family,” Sémiramis said.

  “I have no desire to sleep,” the widow said, opening her eyes. “It feels good, being here with you. I’m so happy you came.”

  She raised her head and looked from one to the other.

  “You’re both looking well.”

  Sémiramis nodded and a blissful smile lit up her face.

  Adam smiled too, and said:

  “Yes, things are good. I’ve been rediscovering the country, the people …”

  “You didn’t get to talk to your friend,” said Tania, “but you don’t regret coming, do you?”

  “I should have come back years ago, but I kept putting it off. It was thanks to your call that I finally made the decision.”

  “And you don’t regret it,” she said again.

  Adam and Sémiramis exchanged a furtive glance and then he said:

  “No, I don’t regret it. Absolutely not.”

  “I’m happy,” said the widow.

  Once more, she let her head rest on Adam’s arm only to quickly sit up and look from one to the other, first him, then her, then him, then her again, before announcing:

  “You’re sleeping together, the two of you.”

  “What are you talking about?” Sémiramis protested with a forced laugh.

  But Tania looked into her eyes.

  “If you tell me I’m wrong, I’ll believe you.”

  This was not a promise, but a challenge. The “chatelaine” did not quite know how to react. But her brief hesitation was tantamount to a confession. After a moment, she answered with a question:

  “What if you’re not wrong?”

  “In that case I’d say: make the most of it. We never get them back, those moments we let slip through our fingers. We spent our whole lives telling each other that one day we would go to Venice, one day we’d go to Beijing and visit the Forbidden City. In the end, we never went anywhere. We spent our whole lives saying: Later, we’ll do it later. When this issue has been sorted. When that invoice has been paid. When we’ve dealt with that. When we’ve got the house back … Then he was struck down by that terrible disease, and from that moment we never knew a single second of joy.

  “So, what I’m telling you is: Don’t be like me. Make the most of every minute. Don’t let some excuse make you turn away from happiness. Make the most of it. Take each other’s hands and never let go.”

  “I don’t want to disappoint you,” Sémiramis said, “but Adam and I aren’t planning to get married.”

  “Who said anything about marriage?”

  Only to contradict herself:

  “And anyway, why not? What’s stopping you?”

  “What’s stopping us is that I don’t want to get married, and neither does he. We just want to be together, to hold hands, and to remember our time at university.”

  “I admire you, Sémi. You’re such a strong woman.”

  “There’s not much to admire, Tania. If I were strong, I’d have walked away from my family, I’d have had the career I always dreamed of. I should have been breaking with traditions twenty years ago, not now.”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself. Twenty years ago, you were the bravest of us all. What we did in secret, you did in broad daylight.”

  “It didn’t do me much good. Bilal is dead …”

  “There’s nothing eith
er you or I can do about that. We love them, they die. However much we try to hang on to them, they slip through our fingers, they leave, they die.”

  Some minutes later, the three friends went into the dining room.

  “I only have the leftovers from lunch,” their hostess said.

  But still her guests suspected that there would be far too much to eat, and responded to her polite apology with polite protests.

  When they had sat down, Adam told Tania, not without a tinge of pride, that the reunion she had wished for was actually going to take place, and much earlier than anticipated.

  “Naïm and Albert are already on their way, and Ramez and his wife have promised to come as soon as we’re all together. That should be at the end of next week at the latest.”

  Tania was visibly delighted, and thanked him profusely. In her voice, in her eyes, he saw, for the first time in years, the Tania of old, his friend, his “loving sister.” But this fleeting moment of joy and gratitude quickly faded and the widow’s eyes grew dark again.

  “Do you think they will speak well of their friend?” she asked.

  “Of course, Tania, don’t worry. They know that you wanted this reunion, they know it is to mourn his death. They’re coming because they are nostalgic for the gatherings we used to have. You have no reason to be worried.”

  But she clearly was. She could not help it.

  “All I want is for people to be fair to him. If he is watching us, listening to us, I want him to feel that his friends still keep him in their hearts. He suffered so much these last years.”

  Was she talking about the mental anguish triggered by the disapproval of his friends—of Adam first and foremost? Or the physical pain of the cancer eating away at him? It was not clear from her words; it probably was not clear in her mind. The twin pains became one and each inflamed the other.

  “You’ve got nothing to worry about, they’re coming as friends,” said Adam. “We all have things that we regret, no one is about to cast the first stone.”

  “Otherwise there would be stones flying in all directions,” said Sémiramis.

  She seemed more amused than troubled at the prospect.

  On the way back, the two friends drove in silence for several minutes before Adam said, with a pent-up sigh:

  “Don’t you think Tania was a bit insistent tonight?”

  Sémiramis nodded wordlessly. Adam said:

  “You know more about the rules of mourning etiquette than I do. How long are we supposed to put up with these mood swings just because she’s grieving?”

  His friend made a helpless gesture. It was Adam who eventually answered his own question.

  “As far as I’m concerned, she’s used up my compassion. Next time she talks to us the way she did tonight, I’m not going to mince words, I’ll tell her exactly what I think of her and her husband.”

  “God rest his soul.”

  “Yes, fine, God rest his soul. But it was like it was his voice I was hearing the other night, and again tonight. Tania used to be so tactful, so discreet, so sensitive. Her husband was the one who used to come out with offensive remarks.”

  “In the thirty years they were together, maybe it rubbed off on her.”

  “That said, Mourad had a certain way of saying even the most offensive things … It was impossible to be too angry with him. With Tania, it’s different. What she said about us was so inappropriate, so unsubtle. I wanted to slap her.”

  “Oh, let it go. So, she accused us of sleeping together—as long as she doesn’t do it in public, I don’t give a damn. At my age, after everything I’ve been through, it honestly doesn’t bother me. I just laugh at such gossip as though it were about someone else. A friend once phoned to tell me what so-and-so had said about me, how I’d had plenty of lovers. I said: better a reputation for plenty then a reputation for penury.”

  “I’m sure you’re right to look at it like that. Even so, the difference in Tania is one of the things that has disappointed me since I came back. I expected to find the friend I used to know, I thought we’d put the bitter legacy of the war behind us and go back to being like brother and sister. Especially since I only came because she asked!”

  They drove for some minutes in companionable silence before Sémiramis said, by way of explanation:

  “Mourad spent those years caught up in his political struggles, in his business, he probably didn’t often think about his old friends. Whereas Tania had time to brood about your argument …”

  “And another thing …” Adam went on, as though continuing the same thought, “Mourad knew perfectly well that he’d done something wrong, that I was right to reproach him. While Tania seems to be convinced that I was unfair to him. She must hate me even more than he did.”

  He paused a moment and then went on:

  “I had a strange feeling the morning they called and asked me to come. It was vague and, at the time, I didn’t really understand it. I got the impression that Mourad knew he had been at fault, and wanted to justify himself before he died—otherwise why waste his last breath talking to me? Whereas I felt as though Tania was trying to make me feel guilty.”

  “From what I know of both of them, I’m sure you’re right. In our country, wives tend to take family quarrels to heart, much more so than their husbands.”

  “Or their sons. Mourad used to say that when he fell out with someone, he never told his mother, because she would immediately turn against that person, making any reconciliation impossible. I guess Tania is behaving towards me the way that her mother-in-law would have.”

  “Tante Aïda …”

  “Yes, Tante Aïda … She was always nice to me. I suppose she’s no longer of this world …”

  Sémiramis giggled. Her friend eyed her suspiciously, reproachfully. It took her more than a minute to regain her composure.

  “I’m sorry, I couldn’t help it! The story isn’t even funny, it’s horrible.”

  “Tell me anyway,” Adam said, scowling.

  He was burning with curiosity.

  “Aunt Aïda died seven or eight years ago. She wasn’t particularly old, but she had presenile dementia. In the last few months, she didn’t recognize anyone, not even her family, it was very hard for them. I heard she spent her days rocking in her chair. Physically, she was still strong, but her mind was gone. At one point, she developed a particular mania. She’d say, ‘I want to go to the house in the mountains,’ and Mourad and Tania would take her there; the next day she’d say, ‘I want to go to the house in the city,’ and they’d take her back … At first, they did so the way you would grant the last wish of someone who is dying. But this happened at least a dozen times—they were getting desperate—and then the doctor told them, ‘In her condition, she’s got no idea where she is, she can’t tell one place from another. Next time she asks you to move her, spin the chair around two or three times and say: We’ve arrived.’ And that’s what they did. Whenever she asked to go somewhere, they spun her around and said, ‘We’re in the city,’ or ‘We’re in the mountains.’ And she believed them.

  “A few months later, the poor thing died. I went to offer my condolences. I was sitting in the living room, next to Tania, and not knowing how to begin the conversation I whispered to her, ‘Did your mother-in-law die in the city or in the mountains?’ Tania burst out laughing. It was scandalous! Mourad was furious with her, and they were both furious with me. But I swear, I didn’t know the story about the chair, I didn’t even know what was wrong with Aïda. By that point, I rarely saw them, I had no contact with them, I’d read the funeral announcement in the paper and gone to offer my condolences. But, to his dying day, Mourad was convinced I’d made a tasteless joke at his mother’s funeral. I don’t think he ever forgave me.”

  She turned to her passenger, who was looking at her doubtfully.

  “You don’t believe me, do you? You thi
nk I did it on purpose. You really think I could be so rude? Do you want me to swear on my father’s grave again?”

  “No, that won’t be necessary,” Adam said enigmatically. “I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.”

  -

  The Eleventh Day

  -

  1

  I’ve decided to go and visit Brother Basil today, Adam wrote in his notebook the moment he opened his eyes on Monday, April 30. Starting tomorrow, my other friends are gradually going to arrive, and I won’t have time to spend a whole day and night in his company.

  Yesterday, Sémi offered to drive me, as she did last time. I flatly refused. I still feel bad for forcing her to make the four-hour round trip that day, especially since I made her wait on a patch of waste ground in the blazing sun for nearly two and a half hours. She didn’t protest, but she is insistent I be driven there in her air-conditioned car by the hotel chauffeur who took me to Tania’s house the night of the funeral, who is the brother of Francis, our champagne waiter.

  Later in the day, Adam set down a detailed account of his second visit to the monastery at Les Grottes.

  The aforementioned Kiwan was as courteous and friendly as he had been last time, and his driving isn’t, in itself, bad. He carefully negotiates the hairpin bends, which is important since there are dozens of them. His one fault is that every time he speaks to me, he feels it is only polite to turn and look at me, and so takes his eyes off the road—only briefly, of course, but it’s pretty nerve-racking.

  I have brought nothing but a small overnight bag—of the kind that in Paris in the Roaring Twenties was called a “baise-en-ville,” a rather inappropriate name when one is spending the night in a place of prayer and meditation. I managed to fit inside my laptop, my toiletry bag, two shirts, some underwear, a thick sweater, and—as a gift for my hosts—a bottle of Benedictine that I bought in the city yesterday.

  I arrived in the early afternoon. The door was opened by the same colossus as last time. When I asked, I discovered that I had been right, he is indeed an Abyssinian. On my previous visit, his smile had been polite, though I sensed a suspiciousness beneath his greying beard. This time, he smiled broadly. Clearly, Brother Basil had since told him I was a close friend, and that I would be coming back to visit. In addition, the fact that I had shown up with an overnight bag made him see me in a very different light—perhaps as a potential recruit.