Rabih Alameddine - The Hakawati

“Oh, sorry,” I said, taking out my wallet. My smallest bill was a five. He thanked me and left. One point against this hotel. At the Plaza Athénée in Paris, the bellboys and waiters deliver and leave before you have a chance to tip them. Much classier. I walked into the first room, with the same avocado carpet, the wallpaper in dark rose with a big white floral pattern, matching the bedspread and curtains. The bellboy had put my bags in this room. The bathroom was cream and yellow ocher, with two doors, each opening to one of the upstairs rooms. I walked through the bathroom to the second room, which I assumed to be my father’s, but on the nightstand was a Patek Philippe, rather than one of the Baume et Mercier watches that he wore. The cologne was the black Paco Rabanne, definitely Uncle Jihad’s, too strong for my father. I descended the stairs to the living room and master bedroom. I sat on the bed, caressed the pillow, laid my head down. I usually loved smelling the scents of my parents on their bed, but something here was peculiar. I stood up, looked around, and saw one of my father’s watches.

I went out to my room’s balcony with the newspaper and smoked a cigarette, figuring my father would never come out there and catch me. I saw Beverly Hills and America, the parade of cars along an endless boulevard. Dusk. The clouds in the sky had become more ominous, pewter-colored. I was excited, about to see a summer storm. A neon sign on the building across the street said seventy-eight degrees in bright red. In Celsius, 25.555 into infinity, I thought.

Again I wished I had brought my guitar, but I couldn’t risk immigration officials’ figuring out I was not here for a short tourist visit. In any case, I hoped to buy a better guitar for my new life in America. The Los Angeles Times said Thursday’s weather forecast was more rain, and highs in the mid-eighties. There was an advertisement for chambray “work shirts” with a touch of class. Why only a touch? A bus hijacker had released the seventy hostages he was holding at a Baha’i retreat not too far from Los Angeles. I felt the moistness of the air, a hot, light-smeared night. I stubbed the cigarette out in the ashtray.

The hospital’s fluorescent light emitted a tiresome buzz. I’d grown inured to it in my father’s first room, but once Tin Can had him moved to the second room, with all the monitors, at my sister’s insistence, I found the interminable hum annoying. I turned off the main lights and switched on a small lamp with a pleated shade that my sister had brought in. I sat on the bed next to my father, focused my eyes on him. I forced myself to look at him, to see him as he was. The image of a younger version kept superimposing itself upon his face. I wasn’t sure that the younger image was accurate, either. My father used to say he looked like Robert Mitchum — the hair, the nose, the mouth. “I’m his brother,” he’d tell us. Of course, he looked nothing like the actor — not the hair, the nose, or the mouth — but you couldn’t argue him out of the resemblance.

Now his skin was slack and spongy. His nose didn’t flare, nostrils no longer nervous: another ineffectual organ added to his collection. His eyelids sagged, unmoving. His hair was all white now, even his eyebrows, and his lips had practically disappeared. I kissed his brow.

How black your hair was.

I should feed his hungry ears, but instead I wept, immodestly and noiselessly.

Guilt, that little demon, gnawing and debilitating, voice thief.

I awoke to the pain of a pinched nerve in my shoulder and the sound of Lina entering the room. “You should have used a pillow and blanket.” The light seemed fuzzy, as if I were looking at the world through grubby contact lenses. Lina walked over to my father. Her hair was matted, sleep-flattened. The strange early light made her seem acutely lonely. “How is he?”

He’s dying, I wanted to say. He seemed fine two days ago, or was it three days ago? I hadn’t wanted to sleep. I’d wanted to spend the night by his side, available. I’d wanted to enchant him. I had wanted so much.

I heard the key turning on the lower floor, made sure the balcony doors were closed, and descended the winding stairs to greet my father. Uncle Jihad was pouring drinks at the bar.

“Osama,” he said loudly. His eyes sparkled, and his lips broke into a delicious smile. He topped his tall scotch with water and managed to take a sip before I reached him. I stood on my toes to kiss his cheek. He wasn’t particularly tall, but at five feet four, I had to stretch to kiss practically anybody. Jolly creases appeared on his chubby face. He looked dapper in a blue suit, jacket unbuttoned, showing his distended stomach, as if he had swallowed a basketball. I heard my father moving about in his room. “Want me to make you a drink?” Uncle Jihad asked.

“I’ll take a Coke,” I said, walking toward my father’s room.

A young blonde woman stood in front of my father’s mirror applying lipstick, burgundy red, on full lips. She smiled, put her lipstick in the handbag on the dresser. “Hello,” she said, extending her hand. “I’m Melanie.” My father came out of the bathroom, zipping his pants.

I felt Uncle Jihad’s hand on my shoulder. “Here’s your Coke,” he said.

“Elvis is dead,” my father announced in Arabic. He sat on the large sofa, sipping his scotch. He was his brother’s follicular opposite: he had a full head of wavy, thick black hair that you could lose quarters in. He’d changed into brown shorts and a green Lacoste shirt — a concession to Melanie, the stranger among us. Had she not been here, he would be in boxer shorts and T-shirt.

I glanced at Melanie and hesitated before I replied in Arabic, “I know. I read about it.”

Even in Western getup, my father didn’t look American — too short, too dumpy. When I was younger, my father always wanted me to watch wrestling with him on television. Before the match began, he’d pick a wrestler to root for, and I was left with the other. He wouldn’t let me pick first, or choose the same wrestler he did. His man always won. “Pick the one who looks like a decent man,” he said. “Decent men never lose.” Since I got stuck with the eventual loser, I passed the time comparing my father, in boxers and T-shirt, with the wrestlers in tight trunks. My father had the loose calves of a sedentary man.

“I thought you’d be more upset,” he said. “Rock and roll is dead and all that.”

“I’m not upset.” My voice rose. “I don’t care if Elvis is dead. I don’t like him. He was old and fat and stupid. It’s about time he died.”

My father snorted. “We have an appointment tomorrow with the dean of engineering at UCLA.” He was still speaking in Arabic, completely ignoring Melanie, who sat across the room. “He says that admission is closed for this fall, but he was impressed with your youth and your grades.”

Melanie was reading Time magazine, pursing her lips.

“This isn’t a child’s game,” my father said. “It’s an interview that will determine your future. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, yes. I’m ready.”

“The appointment is tomorrow afternoon at three,” he said, picking up the barricading newspaper, a signal ending the conversation.

Melanie sat serenely in her chair. She looked young, couldn’t be more than twenty-three, but she had a confident manner. She was like a prettier Nancy Sinatra, with full breasts that were about to burst from her décolleté black dress. Her bleached-blond hair fell below her shoulders. Her eyebrows were plucked. I wanted to inspect them and see if they’d been shaved and drawn in with brown pencil. Her nose was dainty, her chin tiny. The most prominent aspect of her face was the makeup. Her thickly applied lipstick was too dark against her skin. Her eyeliner seemed to cover her lids, and the eye shadow was three-toned, mauve, purple, and light blue. She was the opposite of my mother, who applied her makeup judiciously. I knew Melanie was taking my measure as much as I was hers, but she was more subtle about it.