André Aciman - Harvard Square

The rest of us looked bewildered and exchanged panicked glances. “What got into him tonight?” asked Ekaterina.

Zeinab, who knew him better than any of us, simply said, “He’s always a pill when everyone else is having a good time.”

Ten minutes later he was back upstairs. Not a word. He headed directly into the dark bedroom again and slammed the door shut once more. Everyone looked at one another very puzzled. Zeinab said she’d seen him upset before, but never like this.

The rest of the evening seemed to last forever. We wanted to put a happy face on things, but everyone’s thoughts were turned to the man who’d locked himself in my bedroom. No one, not even I had the courage to go inside to look in on him. To kill time, we cleaned up, put things away, washed dishes, wrapped everything, and everyone was asked to take something home. I’d take care of the garbage, my mind already thinking of the trash container on the service door landing. It seemed to me that Linda and Ekaterina, for all their newly sprung friendship, were perhaps vying to see who of the two would outstay the other. Part of me wanted them to sort it out among themselves; the other part began to hope they’d both come up with a better plan.

Kalaj came out only after most of the guests had left. Someone had dropped a strawberry from one of the cakes on the carpet and then stepped on it. It was impossible to remove the stain. Ekaterina said it was Count. A friend had lent me this antique Persian Tabriz because my living room was larger than his. One day, though, he’d want it back exactly as he had lent it to me.

Kalaj said he’d clean the rug. He knew how to remove stains. But by then I had scraped the strawberry with a sharp knife and then poured stain remover on the rug.

“I wish I had thrown gasoline on her face. And on his.”

“What happened?” we asked.

“What happened? What happened? Couldn’t you hear?”

None of us had heard a thing.

“I beat them up. That’s what’s happened. Now you know.”

“What do you mean you beat them up?” I asked, unable to believe the obvious.

“They were in my cab. Together. Neeking .”

Ekaterina exclaimed What!

“Well, she’s a woman, so I slapped her a bit. But he’s a man. So I punched him in the face.”

Kalaj didn’t have a scratch on him.

“Where are they now?”

“They ran away, both of them.”

I looked at him.

“Let me call her and make sure she’s all right,” said Ekaterina.

“Don’t you dare.”

Ekaterina quickly picked up the receiver and called her friend.

There was no answer.

“I know what she’s doing.”

“What?” I asked.

“I already told you. They’re neeking .”

“You should never hit anyone.”

“Pummel her, that’s what I should have done.”

He picked up his fatigue jacket and turned to Ekaterina and said he was driving her home.

“I’m staying,” she said, “or I’ll walk. I don’t know, I’ll see. You go home.”

With that he uttered his usual “Bonne soirée” and was abruptly gone.

All three of us sat on the same sofa dazed and immobilized. As I awoke to the reality of the night’s events, I made my mind up never to have anything to do with Kalaj again. Enough was enough. “That’s the end of that friendship,” I said. “And I’m never speaking to him again,” Ekaterina said.

But none of us budged from our spot on the sofa. Perhaps we needed to seem more dazed than we really were. Perhaps we wished to stay dazed, for all three of us had a good inkling of where things were headed tonight, though neither would do anything to bring them about or interfere if they happened. I turned off all the lights and in the dark brought out the big bottle of vodka and poured a generous amount for each in three plastic glasses. This, whatever spell we were under, needed booze. I knew I’d start with Linda’s shoulder. I wanted Ekaterina to kiss her other shoulder.

IN THE MORNING, my buzzer rang.

It was Léonie. When she appeared on the landing of my floor, I couldn’t believe my eyes. She had a big bruise on her cheekbone and red blotches all over her face. “And that’s nothing,” she said, once she realized how shocked I was. “Feel my head.” She grabbed my hand and let me feel under her hair. Her scalp was full of lumps and bumps.

“And he pulled out my hair. And tore my clothes too.”

She had no one to turn to except me, she said. Her employer, Austin’s mother, wanted to report the incident to the police. But Léonie said she needed to see me first. Why? I asked. Because it was complicated, she said.

She sat down in my kitchenette area while I started to boil some water for tea.

First of all, was she in pain? I asked. And Count, how was he?

“He too wants to report it to the police. Kalaj broke two of his teeth, and to top everything Count is furious with me. He says I should have told him I was with Kalaj. I told him we were over quite a while ago.”

“I didn’t know. You seemed so lovey-dovey at Walden Pond.”

“By then it was long over. We were just friends.”

I was surprised.

“So what are you going to do now?” I asked, like a lawyer opening a file with a new client. All I needed was to take out a yellow legal pad, intersperse my questions with a few nods, and light a giant meerschaum pipe.

“If you report him and file a complaint,” I finally said, “they’ll deport him. Even a restraining order will get him deported.”

I didn’t know a thing about the legalities of what I was saying, but what I said seemed to make sense.

“I know,” she said, “but what do you want me to do? He’s crazy. He’ll kill me. I don’t want him near me. I was so scared last night that I ended up calling my mother in France. I was almost ready to go back, but I love Austin and Austin loves me, and I love the family also.”

“Perhaps too much,” I threw in.

“So he’s told you about that too — of course!”

“Yes. It upset him a lot.”

“Everything upsets him a lot.”

“So what do you want to do?” I asked, nodding, meaning: Let’s get down to brass tacks .

“If Austin’s mother reports him to the police, Kalaj will let her know that I’ve slept with her husband. I know he’ll tell her, I know him. If I file a report, he’ll still tell the wife. If Count goes to the police, he’ll right away tell Austin’s mother. If they could deport him this afternoon without giving him a chance to call anyone, I would do it. He is the worst mistake of my life, and I’ve made huge ones before, which is why I came to the States. Better yet, if he could disappear somewhere in the Midwest I’d be perfectly happy, because then I won’t even have it on my conscience that he was deported because of me.”

I had every sympathy for Léonie. But, without knowing why, I wanted to prevent Kalaj’s deportation.

The best thing I could do was, first, to persuade her not to file a complaint and, second, to make sure they made up, or at least had a talk — in my presence if they wished. I’d seen it done in movies. People airing their differences, their grievances. “Very ersatz,” I finally said.

She laughed. Then, seeing herself laugh, she began to cry. It was the first time she was crying about this, she said. She’d held up well enough until now. No one had ever beaten her before, not even raised their hand against her. And now this fellow, this convict wanted to lord it over her? Who did he think he was?

The big question was how to prevent Count from going to the police. “He’s vindictive. You saw how he argued with Kalaj last night. Plus he probably feels mortified for getting beaten up without putting up a fight, not even to protect me. He doesn’t want to see me again.”