André Aciman - Out of Egypt - A Memoir

“But he didn’t mean anything by it,” the Princess said to Monsieur Jacques, trying as well to repair the damage. “Do you think the kettle means anything when it goes about calling other kettles black? How could it if it’s a kettle itself?”

“ How could it, madame? Easily. First, by forgetting it’s black. Then by forgetting it’s a kettle in the first place — which it should be proud of being, considering such kettles don’t survive five thousand years unless there’s a good God watching over them. And let me tell you something else, Madame Esther: any kettle that slanders its own kind is no kettle worthy of my home, and certainly not of God’s kitchen!”

“Monsieur Jacques, don’t get carried away now. I was only speaking about a sixty-year-old man who is very sick and to whom life has been good in such small doses you’d think God’s kindness was squeezed out of an eye dropper. He is a very unhappy and bitter man. His is an old kettle with hardly a whistle left to it.”

“The whistle is quite intact, thank you very much,” said the infidel Turk when the Saint reported this conversation to him and, as usual, was lured into playing cards with him. “My wife should be the last to judge such things, seeing she is the most unmusical woman in the world.”

“But she loves to hear me play the piano,” the Saint responded.

“I wasn’t talking about piano music.”

The Saint paused.

“Oh, I see,” she said.

“No, you don’t,” he was about to reply but caught himself and said, “You see through everything, don’t you, down into the most hidden recesses of the heart. And yet you never let on that you do. Meanwhile you’ve figured us all out, you with that dangerous flair of yours.” To which she replied with her favorite little apothegm. “I may not be learned, Monsieur Albert, but I am sharp, sharp enough to see that you are poking fun at me right now.” She sorted out cards and produced a winning combination. “Thank God I can win at cards, for otherwise you would think me a real dolt.”

“Madame Adèle, where were you when I was a young man?”

“Monsieur Albert, don’t speak like that. God gave each of us the life we deserve. You yours, and me mine.”

“You yours, and me mine,” he mimicked as he shuffled the cards. “Do you think we can persuade Him to reserve a berth for you in my cabin when it’s time to take the long journey?”

“When the time comes for that, I want to return to my parents.”

“Not to Monsieur Jacques?”

“Monsieur Jacques has given me his life. His afterlife he can give someone else.”

She pondered her cards a moment. “Will your wife be joining you in the afterlife?” she said with a lambent tremor on her lips, averting her eyes.

“Jealous as she is—”

“Who, your wife? How little you know women, Monsieur Albert.”

“And how little you know my wife! She is so spiteful that if she were to die before me, she would immediately send for me so as never to allow me to forget I was ever married to her.”

Indeed, the Princess’s jealousy had nothing to do with love. The more she disliked her husband, and the more he fled from her, the more she was afraid of losing him. She was a model of dutiful solicitude because she wished him dead in small doses every day — which is how he loathed her, with the scrupulous devotion of weak, unfaithful husbands. She was attentive to his minutest needs: his specially brewed coffee in the morning, his ration of spinach pastries at noon, her special consommés for his special rice, the dried fruit sauce for his lean meats, his lightly starched shirts and neatly pressed handkerchiefs whose creases she was forever smoothing; down to the way she would decorate his plate with assorted cheeses, dips, and olives when it was time for his raki at night — in all this, she was the most punctilious of wives, begrudging him nothing, yet with every gesture reminding him that she had brought nothing into his life save those things he had never asked for. Ironically, he had far greater need of her love — of which she had some — than she had of his — of which there was none.

“You should never say such things about her,” said the Saint, who was always eager to come to anyone’s defense, partly because she was kind and didn’t like to encourage slander, but also because her little rebukes always seemed to force people to intensify their original indictments of others.

“She’s been the perfect wife for you: your cook, your maid, your nurse, your seamstress, your barber, your mother even. How many times has she saved you from certain ruin? She’s the most intelligent woman on Rue Memphis.”

“I know,” he said turning to the Saint with doleful sarcasm in his eyes. “I know. God gave her the biggest brain in the world. But he gave her nothing else. In her company even an iceberg would catch cold.”

At that moment the Princess returned from her daily visit with her siblings. “How could you two be playing cards in the dark like this?”

“Romance,” explained the husband without looking up.

“But didn’t you hear the news?”

“What news?”

“The war is over.”

To celebrate the armistice, the Princess, who had just walked in with Madame Dalmedigo, decided to improvise a real tea, with meringue, fig and date jams, petits fours, and homemade biscuits, which she kept under lock and key in one of the many cupboards in the pantry. Another neighbor, Arlette Joanides, who was walking past their veranda with her daughter Micheline, was stopped, told of the news, and summarily invited for tea. Half an hour later, Aunt Flora, her mother, Marie Cantacouzenos, and Fortunée Lombroso, still later joined by Maurice Franco and Liliane Arditi, had come also — so that, when Monsieur Jacques arrived home from work, he was informed by his daughter that her mother was still visiting across the street. “Then go fetch her and tell her, once and for all, that her place is here”—indicating their dark and empty living room—“and not there,” pointing to the henhouse. The families were back on speaking terms, but there always remained a certain froid between the men. The eighteen-year-old daughter, who had been reading a novel, slipped a cardigan over her shoulders, rushed downstairs, and in a second was ringing at their neighbor’s door. “I’ve come to tell my mother that my father wants her to come home now.” “Come in and don’t be silly. Where are we, in the Middle Ages?” cried the Princess, who by now had learned to understand the deaf girl’s speech. “We’re having tea and playing cards, come in.”

The young girl came in but continued to linger near the doorway.

“Your father wants me to be home, doesn’t he?” asked the Saint as soon as she caught sight of her daughter standing awkwardly outside the living room.

The girl nodded. The Princess thrust a cup and saucer in the girl’s hands, which she accepted absentmindedly.

“A real tyrant, that’s what he is,” said the Princess’s husband.

“You men are all tyrants,” rejoined Arlette Joanides.

“And what are women, then?” he asked, turning to Monsieur Franco.

“To marry men like you one has to be a fool,” said one of the women.

“Anyone who marries is a fool,” said the Princess’s husband. “But those who stay married after realizing their mistake are criminally stupid.”

“Stop these roguish airs and play,” snapped the Princess to her husband.

“Is what I say false?” he asked the young girl who was now sitting next to her mother.

She made no response.

“How like a woman. Doesn’t answer when it’s not convenient.”

“All this banter about women!” said one of the women, “but when you need us to hem a sleeve so you can go out and impress your twopenny waitresses, you come crawling to us. Marriage!”