by Chaitali Sen
At the end of the first week, Malick said he was pleased with their progress. They were seeing the beginnings of a regional synthesis. “Are you satisfied with your work?” he asked John.
“Yes, I think so.”
They sat on a boulder eating sandwiches, looking out at a silver stream coiling through the valley. These rare moments of rest made Malick wistful.
“You remind me of my son,” Malick said. “Though he’s older than you. He’s thirty.”
“Not much older. Does he live here?”
“He’s in Germany, working. He hasn’t lived with me since he was little. My wife died of cancer when my son and daughter were young. They were raised by my sister.”
John wondered how they’d come to that decision. “And your daughter lives in France?”
“Yes, married to a French boy. She’s thirty-one. They tolerate me like they would a persistent uncle.”
Malick sounded weary. Perhaps it hurt him to think of his children for too long. John wanted to ask him more but he thought better of it. They sat for a while longer. John was silent, gathering words that could explain his reason for being here.
“Do you remember that you told me about Mariam, from the library?”
“Of course,” Malick said.
“Did she seem happy?”
“Happy? Yes, I suppose. Was she someone special to you?”
John didn’t know how to answer. It was uncomfortable to sit here discussing his past, though he had asked for it. “We haven’t seen each other in almost eight years.”
“Something occurred to me after meeting her,” Malick said. “I believe I knew her father. I was a consulting geologist on one of his projects.”
“You must have known him,” John said. “He was a civil engineer. What was he like?”
“Difficult, and brilliant, a man with great vision but always distracted. He had left his wife. We all thought he was crazy for that alone. Talk about a beauty, my God!”
“He went back to her,” John informed him, but Malick was lost for a moment, perhaps reveling in the memory of a beautiful woman, or simply the idea that he was once young enough to get caught up in the life of a difficult colleague.
John felt he should get to the point. If the conversation went on too long, he didn’t know what he might end up confessing.
“I thought if you gave me a reason to be in Sulat, I would have more time to explain myself to Mariam.”
Malick looked worried. “You need to explain yourself? What did you do to her?”
John felt defensive. He wanted to talk to Mariam about it, not Malick. “She seems to have forgiven you, John.” This was a kind enough statement but John took it as a subtle attempt to discourage him. Like Vic, Malick seemed to think he should leave her alone.
“I need to go whether you invite me or not. I don’t know what I’m still doing here, really. What I’m trying to say is I have to follow you home.”
“I was sure you wanted to get out of Alexandria to avoid your dissertation.”
“I didn’t have to leave Alexandria to avoid my dissertation,” John said.
Malick laughed and patted him on the knee. “Let’s take a break from this tomorrow,” he said. “There’s something else I want to show you.”
They set off early the next morning. When they reached the area Malick had wanted to show him, John didn’t know what to look for. They parked off the road and hiked for a long time over boulder-strewn hills until they came to a place where a number of larger, more angular boulders were scattered in all directions. They were in the Luling greenstone belt, a geological rarity containing remnants of the earth’s early continents, small swatches of Archean rock which by chance had survived the forces of erosion and subduction. The rock here was among the oldest still found on earth. It was a gift to have within their borders. The exposed bedrock was grayish green and craggy, its edges jutting out of the soil at steep vertical angles. “We’ve mapped this area quite thoroughly,” Malick said, “but last summer I brought some students here, just to take another look. In a few places, here and a bit further out, there is a layer of spherule-rich ocean sediment. The spherules were impact-derived. Their age coincides with the formation of these angular boulders, 2.8 billion years.”
All at once, John tried to look surprised, intrigued, and confounded. Choosing one would have required more than an elementary knowledge of the Archean era. Impact-derived spherules pointed to an asteroid strike. “Is there any other evidence of a strike from this period?” John asked.
“I don’t know,” Malick confessed. “If you had been thinking for some time about the evolution of continents, and then happened upon this evidence of an asteroid strike embedded in this rather small outcrop of Archean rock, how would you proceed?”
John was tired, his body ached, and he couldn’t see the point of this mental exercise. “I suppose I would try to figure out the size and quantity of the impacts, try to find out if this was an anomalous event. I would look for everything that’s been published on asteroid impacts in the Archean period, learn everything about the composition and distribution of the spherules. That would be a good start. Do you agree?”
Malick nodded. “I asked my students the same question, but none of them were interested in pursuing it.”
Who could blame them, John thought. No one in their right mind made the early continents a focus of their study. It was too difficult, the few greenstone belts around the globe had been picked over, and there was no gratification in it. John was willing to bet that at least half of the country’s geology students didn’t even know this region existed.
“I feel I’ve run out of time.”
“You still have another twenty years,” John insisted. “You’re not dying, are you?”
“Not that I know of,” Malick said. He began to think out loud, composing a lecture on continent formation, muttering on about repeated cycles of cooling and melting and lighter materials separating from denser ones, about the creation of a buoyant crust. John wondered if the problem was not one of time but self-doubt. Malick was formulating a question. The issue wasn’t whether there was an impact or how large it was. It was deducing, from all that, whether the impact helped or impeded the beginning of a continent. It was a far cry from making maps.
“You can help me,” Malick said. “Gather some literature for me. It will give me an idea of whether I should pursue this or not.”
“Right,” John said, but he was confused, unsure of what he’d just agreed to.
Malick slapped his back. “So you’re coming. To English Canal. Beg your sweetheart to forgive you and do a little work for me. All right?”
There were eight weeks left in the summer. Eight weeks could be enough. Malick’s invitation was sincere. “Yes, all right,” he said. Suddenly he couldn’t keep still. He felt like he could run for miles.
SIX
It was impossible to find a room in English Canal on short notice. He was stuck with a musty house far from the campus, where his temporary landlady, an ancient, cantankerous woman, hobbled around in a yellow housecoat and talked to herself in a raspy death rattle of a voice. She seemed to resent every interaction with John, including the one in which he paid her money to rent a room. She took the money sneeringly and put it in the pocket of her housecoat. The old woman, and the house around her, smelled like urine and disinfectant. His room was upstairs, in the attic, and had the same smell but plenty of windows, which he opened to let in a redemptive breeze. The view was nice, pitched roofs and tall pines.
He left the house and walked along the canal to the College of Sulat Province. He almost lingered among the cafés and booksellers on College Street, but instead continued walking until he came to the campus, a small cluster of twelve buildings around a long grassy common. The library was a white townhouse with tall windows and black shutters, a simple, beautiful building t
hat made his nerves rattle. Mariam was inside and he wanted to be past this reunion, yet he evaluated the architecture of the library for a long time.
The lobby was bright with marble. He looked at the directory and took the elevator to the top floor, the research department, and approached a young woman standing behind a long, curved counter. She said, “Good afternoon” in a voice as wispy as a cloud. When he told her he was looking for Mariam, her decorum floundered. Her mouth hung open for a moment before she answered, “Mariam’s in the map room.”
“I see. Where is that?”
“You can’t go to the map room,” she said. By then she was smiling with a delirious look in her eyes. “Would you like to wait here?”
She pointed to a seating area nearby with wide leather armchairs. As he sat down another woman joined the first one behind the counter and a secret conversation began. John looked away, but every time he heard footsteps his head jerked as if he were on a leash. He studied the dark wood panels lining the walls. They continued all the way up to a wood-coffered ceiling, from which there hung a large chandelier resembling the helm of an old ship. It was a strangely calming focal point. He looked up and breathed in, trying to think only of his admiration of the chandelier.
Afterwards, all he could remember was that she was not there, and suddenly she was, standing nearby and staring at him with her lips parted. That was where his eyes fell first, on the sliver of darkness between her lips. She wore a sky blue dress that lifted the blue from her pale brown skin. One side of her hair was pinned behind her ear, those ears—now jeweled with small pearl earrings. His imagination had failed him. Now his body was numb and his voice, a coiled rope.
She asked him to follow her. Somehow he rose, walking weakly behind her. She led him to a study room, far from the inquisitive glances of her colleagues, and behind that door, they fell into a silent embrace. He could feel her trembling and suffering, like him, and he kissed her ear, her cheek, her eyebrows and lips.
An invasion of voices in the hallway pulled them apart. As the voices passed she collected herself and backed away. He leaned on the table behind him, trying to hold still.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I’m working with Malick for the summer.”
“Dr. Malick,” she said. “I met him a few weeks ago. I asked him to say hello.”
“He did. Can you get away?”
“I can’t. I have to work until eight today.” She didn’t offer an alternative.
“What about afterwards?” he asked, sounding desperate. Already this transaction was slipping away from him.
“I suppose I could meet you after.” She glanced back at the door. “I won’t have much time. The last tram is at ten. There’s a place near the tram stop. I could meet you there. It’s called English Tavern.”
He grinned. “English Tavern,” he said. “It’s still here.”
She understood him and smiled, at last.
“I’ll find it,” he said. “You’ll be there?”
“Of course,” she said. Her hand was on the doorknob. “I’ll see you there.”
The tavern was easy to find. He got there fifteen minutes early and was relieved to see Mariam sitting on a bench by a streetlight, reading a book. “Did I have the time wrong?” he asked.
“I got off a little early. I didn’t know how to contact you.” She closed the book delicately and slipped it back in her bag. Then she stood up and they walked together into the tavern. There was a great deal of noise from a billiards room in the back, but the front room was empty and quiet. By a window facing the street, there was a small table. They sat across from each other and he ordered their drinks, two gin and tonics, which they finished quickly as they made small talk. He ordered two more and they talked for a little while about other things, other people. He told her about his mapping trip with Malick. She told him about her father, about his slow recovery. She asked him if he stayed in touch with people from Mount Belet. He said not many. “What about Nina?” she asked. Of course Nina would have been the only one who mattered to her.
“No. You?”
“I get a postcard from time to time. She lives in Brussels. She married a doctor. Did she ever tell you she lost her virginity to her family doctor?”
“Don’t tell me she married him.”
“No,” she said, smiling. “But she must have had something for doctors. Even sons of doctors.”
He didn’t want to talk about Nina anymore. Nina was someone he forgot about constantly.
“I never really bought the story about the doctor,” he said.
She picked up her glass and held it to her lips for a long time before she took a sip.
“I did then,” she said. “I believed everything everyone told me back then.”
He emptied his glass and looked around, feeling unsettled without a drink. He either wanted another or he wanted to take Mariam somewhere quieter. He knew they would have to talk about the past. It was the reason he was here, to talk about it and then bury it.
“Do you remember the last time we spoke?” she asked.
“A little,” he said. He remembered that he had called her from a strange pub in the desert, that he had talked about stars and a boat. For John, the memory of that night carried a heavy weight. It was Sherod’s last night, the night that put him in the hole and got him sent to Menud Fort. It was the night that derailed him. He couldn’t guess what it was for Mariam, if it was a time that held onto her and wouldn’t let go, or if it was simply a logical place to begin their conversation. In a way, it was the beginning of his abandonment.
“After you hung up I had a terrible feeling that I would never see you again. I wrote you a letter. I sent it to the pub like you told me to and it came back to me. I was so worried I called your mother to find out if you were all right.”
“She wouldn’t have known anything,” he said.
“No, she didn’t know anything. She didn’t even know who I was.”
He knew he had to offer her something. “I was sent away that night, Mariam.”
“Sent away?”
“I got into some trouble and I was sent away.”
“To where?”
“I know that I owe you an explanation. I have one, Mariam, I do, but can it wait a little longer? Can it be enough that we’re here together right now?”
“You don’t owe me anything,” she said gently. “You told me the truth. You said goodbye and I accepted it.”
“I didn’t think I could take care of you. I couldn’t imagine you in Alexandria and I couldn’t imagine myself here.”
“You were right, John. I understood.”
Of course, he thought. That was all she had said then, that she understood.
“What I don’t understand is why you’re always the one that decides. You decide when it’s over and when it should start again.” She pulled her shoulders up into a deep shrug. “Now it looks like I was waiting for you all this time.”
“I know you weren’t waiting,” he began, searching for the right thing to say. “I just needed to come and talk to you.”
“Why? Why now?”
He was nervous. Mariam seemed rightfully distrustful of his intentions, and alarmingly willing to send him away. Whatever confidence he’d had at the start of the evening had vanished. He was afraid everything he said would come out sounding insincere or self-centered. He was here now because Malick had given him a message, but how could he explain that to Mariam without acting as if he only came because he’d been summoned?
It was no use. There was nothing he could say. He reached across the table and took her hand. Encouragingly, she didn’t pull away. Her fingers curled beautifully over his thumb.
Her attention was drawn to the street where the high-pitched bell of the tram signaled its arrival. A few passengers got on it. They took their seats an
d the door closed. “That’s the last one,” she said.
He didn’t know if she had another way of getting home. He could walk with her or put her in a taxi, but neither of those was an acceptable end to the evening. “I have a room in a boarding-house,” he said. “We could go there and be alone for a while.”
She was still looking out the window. When she looked back at him, her eyes were alight, both troubled and excited by his proposal. He warned her that it didn’t smell very nice and the landlady was unpleasant, and Mariam said, “Let’s go.”
They left the tavern and strolled to the street where he thought he would find the boarding-house. It wasn’t there. He was lost among all the streets that sloped in the exact same way. After they wandered for a while, Mariam asked what street it was on, and took him right to the house. There was a flickering blue light in the side window, the television blaring through the walls. He put the key in the door and got it open just as the laughter from a comedy program invaded the hallway. He gestured to Mariam to wait at the bottom of the stairs, while he walked down the hall to the television room where the old woman had fallen asleep on the couch. He thought about tiptoeing past her to turn off the television, but it would have been horrendous to wake her. He shut the door, went back to Mariam, and took her up the stairs.
Thankfully the breeze had freshened the room in his absence. Mariam went to a window and looked out. “Do you see the canal?”
He stood behind her, looking in the direction she was pointing. “If you follow the canal east, it goes straight to my house.”
He put his arms around her waist and they were silent, watching the pine branches bounce lightly in the wind. After a while he kissed her neck. She turned around and leaned against the wall, unbuttoning his shirt as she kissed him. Her dress frustrated him. He searched for an opening, something to help him peel it away from her body. She was burning up in that dress.