The Pathless Sky

by Chaitali Sen

  “You converse fluently in German?”

  “Only with geologists.”

  Something coincidental occurred to her. “Maybe you and my mother can talk to each other. My parents met in Germany.”

  “I remember. I remember you told me that once.”

  “My father too,” she said. “He might remember some of his German.” She told herself to shut up. He’d only just met her parents and already he was saddled with responsibilities.

  There were no more objects in the room to occupy him. He stood by her bureau with his hands in his pockets. She was still lying on the floor, a slovenly mess and her body not quite solid again. His composure embarrassed her and she sat up. “I want to show you something,” she said. She went to her bedside table and opened the drawer. The only thing inside was a hardbound notebook, which she had wanted to fill with information about her grandfather. It was not even a quarter full, but every now and then it interested her again and she found something more to put in it. At the beginning of the summer, she had added a letter from one of her grandfather’s close comrades. She had tracked him down in Marseilles after a series of frustrating communications, wrote to him with limited hope and was surprised to receive his reply within two weeks. He said he would like nothing more than to sit with Suleiman Momin’s granddaughter and recall him, but he asked her to come quickly, because of his age and poor health. He was over eighty and his penmanship was large and heavy, like a child’s. After reading his letter, though she was sure he was confused about the distance she would have to travel to get to him, she took it as a sign that it was time to go abroad. She started planning a trip to France, and might have had her passport and visa and her ticket booked before the end of the summer, but John came and her curiosity shifted. In truth she had forgotten about Marseilles. Why did things happen like this, in competing pairs?

  John sat down to look at the notebook with her. “I haven’t shown this to anyone until now,” she said. “Not even my mother. My grandfather killed himself in Germany and broke my mother’s heart.” His eyebrows shot up, casting deep lines across his forehead. His forehead was so expressive, so sympathetic. “Suicide? Why did he do that?” John asked.

  “My mother said he wasn’t made for a life of exile.”

  “How old was she when it happened?”

  “She was seventeen,” Mariam said. “My grandfather had been a lawyer here. Then he got involved in politics.” She showed him the information she’d collected in the notebook, crudely trying to narrate her grandfather’s story. John listened without interruption, but he got stuck on the photograph of her grandfather with Peter Moses. He kept her from turning the page and squinted at the picture as if he’d seen it before.

  “I know about your grandfather,” he said, sounding far from certain.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “When I was at the training camp they took your letters. I never got to read them. They said something about your grandfather,” he said. “Did I ever tell you that?”

  “You told me they took my letters. You think it was because of my grandfather?” He was being vague, and she found it hard to believe her grandfather’s actions would have held much consequence so long after his death.

  “The commanding officer called me into his office and showed me the stack of letters. I remember his face clearly. He looked like a wild pig. He said something about your grandfather, and the war.”

  “What did he say exactly?”

  John looked hopeless. “I don’t remember. That he was a troublemaker, something like that. All I could think about were the letters. I was hoping he would give them to me.”

  “But he didn’t?”

  “No,” he said. He seemed distracted now, pulled away by his fragmented memory. She was torn between wanting to know more and wanting John to remain here with her, in the present.

  She put her notebook back in the drawer and didn’t say anything more about her grandfather. “Let’s go see the canal,” she suggested. They washed up and went outside, walking along the canal toward the Market Bridge. She told him how the canal was being drained slowly. When it was empty, they would fill it with cement and turn it into a wide boulevard. They stopped at the Market Bridge and looked over the parapet into the tranquil water. “It’s so peaceful here,” he said. They stood there for a long time with their bodies overlapping. It was amazing how long they remained there without moving. Mariam couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so still. Then Mariam wanted to help her mother prepare lunch, and they walked back, talking about everyday things regarding her father and mother and their plans for the afternoon. By the time they reached the house, her father was up and sitting on the sofa in front of the television, feeding himself a small meal of rice and minced beef. He looked at John curiously, trying his best to keep his food on the spoon at the same time. “This is my friend,” Mariam said. Her father tilted his head toward the seat next to him, and John sat down. There, she thought happily, they were already communicating well. She left them and went to the kitchen.

  Mama was surprised to see her alone. “Don’t leave him in there,” she scolded. “What will he do when your father starts asking questions?”

  “He’ll handle it,” Mariam said, though she didn’t want to witness it herself, John straining to understand and her father giving up in frustration. She got busy snapping the ends off dozens of string beans. “What do you think of him?” she asked.

  “He’s good, darling. I prayed for him to be good.”

  “I knew he would come, Mama. I always knew it.”

  “Did you, Mariam?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, then, thank God he did.”

  They began to talk about the end of the summer. He said he would not return to Alexandria without her. He wanted to get married here, and not tell anyone until it was done, and she agreed. She didn’t want a long engagement. She didn’t want letters and telephone calls. She wanted to take this chance at happiness even if she felt ill-prepared for it. There was only one thing she needed to know before she committed to the idea without fear. She needed to know if she could always be herself with him. After a little effort, she had received a packet from the headmistress of a government school in Menud Fort. It contained a detailed letter explaining how often children from her school disappeared for various reasons, but for the dates in question, there was only one child it could have been, a five-year-old girl named Rohana Bul. Rohana Bul had a twelve-year-old sister they hoped had escaped, but she was found dead later, in the field, a short distance from the checkpoint. She had been violated, the letter said. Also killed on that day was Rohana’s pregnant mother. The fate of her father had never been determined. The headmistress enclosed a copy of the child’s enrollment form along with her school identification photo. The reproduction was small and grainy, but solid enough. All of their names were there in the packet, but the picture was only of Rohana.

  Mariam took the envelope to John. She sat on his bed, holding it in her lap. “What is that?” he asked.

  “I’ve done something, John. I don’t know if it will make you angry. But I’ve done it and I don’t want to keep it from you.” He watched her take out the picture of Rohana Bul. She handed it to him without explaining it. She could tell from his look of confused sorrow it was the same little girl he’d found in the car. It seemed to cause him great pain, and in the moment he might have felt betrayed by her. He might have felt unsafe, but Mariam was certain it was better for him to see it, and better to know her name. He stared at the picture for a long time, and in the days following, he told Mariam he had dreams in which Rohana was a living child, and in those dreams it felt like she was their own daughter.

  At the end of the summer, he came to the library and signaled her toward a private study room. He had to wait by the door, since she was with a student who was taking a long time, but as soon as she could
get to him and unlock the door and bring him into the room, he grabbed her and kissed her fanatically. “We can do it tomorrow,” he said.

  The next morning she left the house without seeing her mother, which wasn’t so unusual. Sometimes she was in a hurry and her mother was occupied in the back of the house. Mariam wore a white dress printed with periwinkles, a little bit of lace at the hem. She went to the courthouse and waited for John, and he appeared a few minutes later, dressed handsomely in a dark blue suit, running up the steps and catching his breath when he reached her. He asked her if she was ready. They stood at the main entrance, waiting for the doors to open. There was no one in front of them or behind them wanting to get married that day and once the doors opened it was all fast and efficient. The magistrate seemed weary of romance and eager to finish up. They had to stand across from each other and repeat an oath, and when the magistrate asked if there was a ring Mariam was about to say no, there couldn’t have been a ring, but John reached into an inside pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out a ring which he slipped on her finger, a sweet silver ring with a small round stone that was the faintest of blues, the blue of a glacier. “This stone is aquamarine. It comes from Sri Lanka. There are four diamonds,” he began, but she kissed him and he couldn’t say another word.

  “All right, all right,” the magistrate said sternly. “You’re married now.”

  It hit her slowly, as they signed their marriage certificate, that she had done something irreversible. It wasn’t that she wanted to undo it. She wanted nothing more than to be married to John, but if there was any chance to do it differently, it had passed. Walking out of the courthouse she got a sick feeling in her belly. “I have to go tell my mother.”

  “We’ll tell her together,” John said, unburdened. What a surprise his parents were in for.

  “No, I have to tell her myself. Come for supper. I’ll make something nice.”

  “Don’t worry, Mariam. She wants you to be happy. Show her how happy you are.”

  With that advice she left her new husband and walked home along the canal to prolong the journey. By the time she got home she had convinced herself of how well it would go. Her mother would be relieved to hear the news, to have her prayers answered. Surely she prayed for the end of Mariam’s solitary life?

  Her mother was alone in the kitchen, buttering toast for breakfast. Mariam had forgotten that it was still early in the day. Her father would have been trying to dress himself. He would appear in the doorway any minute either needing assistance or pumping his fist triumphantly, ready for his next challenge. Her mother looked up, still busy with the toast. “You haven’t left yet?”

  “Actually, I took the day off. I just came back.”

  “Back from where?” she asked. Mariam had not meant to hold out her hand yet. She was looking for the right words and looked at her hand instead, at the ring, as if it might tell her what to say. Her mother saw the ring and locked her eyes on it, even after Mariam lowered her hand.

  “Don’t be upset, Mama.”

  “Why would I be upset? What mother wants to be invited to her only daughter’s wedding?”

  “We didn’t tell anyone,” Mariam explained. “Not even his parents know yet.”

  “What was the hurry? Are you pregnant?”

  “He has to go back to Alexandria.”

  Her mother made a strange, snickering sound. “To chase the ghosts of mountains,” she remarked. It wasn’t like her to be so belittling.

  “You said he was good. That’s what you prayed for,” Mariam said. Of course it was possible Mama had lied when she said that. Mariam wondered now if lying wasn’t the thing her mother did best.

  Her mother went back to buttering the toast. She bored holes in it with her furious scraping.

  “I expected a longer engagement. Usually there is some kind of engagement.”

  Mariam couldn’t see the point of an engagement. Hadn’t she waited long enough? Did her mother have no sympathy for her, no understanding at all of her desires?

  “He’s going back to Alexandria next week,” Mariam said. “I’m going with him.”

  Mama didn’t respond. She tossed the butter knife into the sink and turned to the stove to get the kettle.

  “I know it’s soon but we can hire a nurse,” Mariam continued. “It’s what Daddy needs anyway. We’ll send you money. Maybe in a few years you can move to Alexandria and he can have the best medical treatment.”

  Her mother refused to turn around, now preoccupied with filling up the kettle. Her silence was hostile, saber-sharp and piercing, and Mariam was becoming shrill. “You can’t really think that I should stay here, when I have a chance to go?”

  This time when her mother looked at Mariam, her eyes were soft and pleading, desperate to try a different tactic. She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin, dignifying herself, taking care with what she might say next. Mariam was prepared to hear something important, something more reasonable. “Mariam,” her mother said with gentle love and condescension, “marriage is not some kind of escape.”

  Mariam stared. “Believe me, Mother, if anyone has shown me that, it’s you.”

  For a second her mother resembled a cowering dog, but she hardened again and Mariam backed away, ashamed of herself and wary of how much farther this confrontation could go. Before she could apologize her father showed up at the door with his shirt more or less buttoned. Her mother ordered him to sit down and slid a plate of toast in front of him. “You should learn to butter your bread,” she said. “It’s not too difficult. I think you can manage it.”

  Her father puckered his lips. He did that with his lips a lot, and Mariam had never figured out if it stood for ambivalence or defiance. A shrug or a grimace? He might have thought his attempts to communicate physically were clear, but they were painfully unclear.

  “Mariam is married. She did it this morning.”

  Her mother lifted Mariam’s hand and showed him the ring. “She’s going away. She’s leaving us.” Her voice broke as she said it. She laced her fingers through Mariam’s and regarded the ring one more time, running her thumb over the blue stone.

  Her father patted her ringed hand, and therefore her mother’s hand too. “Good girl,” he said.

  The kettle began to shriek. Her mother let go of her and went to the stove, and Mariam, after taking a breath, got three cups down from the cupboard.

  EIGHT

  In Alexandria, the foliage was varied and everywhere in late summer there were window boxes overflowing with flowers. John lived in an elegant building on a boulevard lined with imported ginkgo trees, their branches lush with prehistoric, fan-shaped leaves unlike any leaves Mariam had seen before. They went on many walks through artful neighborhoods, and in the evenings they went up to his rooftop to look over the city of white domes and silver spires, miles of domes and spires until they faded into the sky. John pointed in a different direction each night, teaching her the geography of the city. To the south, on a clear day, they could see the river that tore the city in half and the jeweled bridges that mended it.

  She met his parents and sisters at their house in Cypress Gardens. All she could say was that she had spent a weekend with them and survived. She survived his father’s kindness and his mother’s reserved manners, survived his older sister Sonya who was so enthralled with her ten-month-old son she hardly noticed Mariam, and she survived the baby, Nathan, whom John devoured every time he came near. Nathan was a fat and sweet baby and Mariam didn’t dare pay him too much attention. She even survived John’s sister Theresa, who was ten years younger, only seventeen, just starting her final year of high school. She was the most heartbroken by John’s sudden marriage, as if she had thought she was going to marry him herself.

  When the weekend was finished and they were finally home, Mariam didn’t know what to say about his family. She missed her own mother and the restful tedium that co
mes from an unquestioned sense of belonging. As she wearily got ready for bed, John said, “Don’t let them intimidate you.” It was true, she had been intimidated, and she’d spent the whole weekend in a panic, terrified of him leaving her side.

  “I’ll do better next time,” she promised.

  “You did fine. That’s not what I meant.”

  “I’ll get used to them.”

  “And they’ll get used to you,” he said. “They’ll love you.”

  She knew his family was unhappy about the marriage, but she also got the idea that it wasn’t completely unexpected for John to go away and come back with a wife. There were things about him they could not predict or understand, and they adored him for it.

  Her next trial was a department party hosted by Nehemia and his wife, who lived in an apartment in the Jewish Quarter, one of the oldest parts of the city. The taxi got lost in the maze of dark streets and narrow cobblestone alleys barely wide enough for a car. Almost an hour late, they stopped in front of a stone building with a large mahogany door. The area was faintly lit with gas lamps and sconces. John tapped an iron doorknocker and the door was heaved open by an elderly doorman.

  Mariam squinted into the deep yellow light saturating the mirrored lobby. They climbed a winding marble staircase to a third-floor landing that fanned out like a river delta, where one red door punctured a curved white wall. Behind the door was a tangle of voices and Mariam gripped John’s hand, hoping he wouldn’t abandon her too quickly.

  John rang the doorbell, and after a shuffling of footsteps the door swung open and Mariam was pulled into the apartment. She was grateful for the dimness of the main room, a long salon lit only with a scattering of Tiffany lamps. She met Nehemia first, who was younger and less intimidating than she expected. He had a salt-and-pepper beard and large soulful eyes, and then his elegant wife came up beside him, dressed stunningly in a full-length brocade gown. Mrs. Nehemia and John kissed each other on the cheek. To Mariam she offered her hand and smiled. “How lovely,” Mrs. Nehemia said to no one in particular. Mariam was introduced to more people whose names and affiliations she could not remember.