Daniyal Mueenuddin - In Other Rooms, Other Wonders

Rafia touched his arm. ‘Darling, you’re too old to be menopausal. Americans aren’t more free than anyone else. Just because an American runs away, to Kansas or Wyo ming, doesn’t mean that he succeeds in escaping whatever it is he left behind. Like all of us, he carries it with him.’ She turned to Helen. ‘Let me ask you. Do you think you’re free?’

‘I’m not old enough yet to know. I think that at twenty-one many girls think they are.’

‘Brilliant!’ said Sohail. He poured more wine for himself and for his parents; Helen put her hand over the mouth of her glass.

After a moment Mr. Harouni stood up and began gathering their dishes. He prevented Sohail from rising to help him, saying, ‘No, no, you sit, let me do this.’

‘You have to admit, my dad’s pretty evolved,’ said Sohail. ‘He even likes to cook.’

Her mind cooling, prickly from the wine, Helen listened to Sohail and his mother talking about their plans for the next few days, museums and the ballet on Christmas Eve. Rafia had a slight British accent, but softer than that, more rounded — as if the accent had been bred by the personality, as one of her individual characteristics. So this is how Sohail grew up , Helen thought. She wondered what lay beneath the angularities of Rafia’s character — a woman so imposing not only in her speech but in her manner, the way in which she moved her hands, the angle at which she held her head. In any case, Helen would manage with Rafia, they would make their peace.

As soon as they finished dessert, Sohail got up to leave, refusing coffee.

‘You don’t have to go yet,’said Rafia, her voice tentative. ‘It’s only nine-thirty.’

Mr. Harouni looked out of the window and then insisted upon loaning Helen a scarf. ‘It’s very cold, you know. And it looks good, the red suits your dress.’ He showed her how to tie the knot in a new way.

Outside it really had become very cold, and even though it was early the streets were empty, the restaurants along the quay deserted.

‘That was nice,’ said Helen, intending it as a question.

‘I wish, I wish they hadn’t come. It’s too much.’

‘Your mother loves you a lot, you know. She wanted us to stay, it was almost pathetic. She’s afraid I’ll take you away.’

‘God, and my father with his scarf. When I was little I went into the drawing room every evening to say good night to my parents — they always had guests — after my bath, with my hair wet; and my father would send the servant for a towel and rub my head with it. That’s it, that was his parenting. And he did it so badly, roughly, just because he didn’t know how to touch me.’

She took his arm, squeezed it, and leaned in to him; they walked quickly along the river, across to the Iªle de la Cité, Notre Dame looming overhead.

‘Did they like me? Did I do all right?’

‘You did beautifully, my love. I was proud of you.’

She knew that he wasn’t being perfectly sincere. ‘I feel like Sohail’s country-cute girlfriend.’

‘It’s not at all like that.’

The apartment felt warm at first, and they threw off their coats and lay back on the futon. Then it became too hot. Helen lit the candles on a little table near their heads, and in the orange light they both softened.

They made love, gently. When they finished Sohail opened the window and a delicious cold air blew in, billowing the lacy curtains and flickering the candles. A light rain fell. He stood by the window, naked, looking out at the city, and she watched him and knew that she loved him very much.

The next morning Helen and Sohail walked along the cold Seine. Among the cobblestones of the quay little puddles had frozen, rough at the edges and black at the centers; as the sun hit them, the ice softened and broke underfoot. The hard blue sky stood enormously tall over Paris. Helen wore high-heeled boots and a long wool skirt. Her friends at Yale each had loaned her something, the reefer jacket she wore that day, some little bits of jewelry, and other simple things. Sohail wore what Helen called his interesting shoes — he had a dozen pairs — jeans, and a long camel-hair coat.

They stood in front of a wooden houseboat painted cream, black at the waterline, the interior visible through latticed windows cut into the sides.

‘Let’s buy one of these soon and live on it,’ he said.

‘I know,’ she said playfully. ‘And we’ll raise sheeps and rabbits and live off the fatta the land.’ Helen often used this line from Steinbeck. She put her little mittened hand into his, turned to face him, and kissed him on the tip of his nose. ‘You make too many impossible plans.’

They left the quay at the Pont de la Concorde and turned down the Champs-Elysées. Under the trees the fallen leaves smelled bitter from the previous day’s rain. They passed a young man selling chestnuts, warming them over coals in a tray cut from a tin barrel, standing on a piece of cardboard for insulation and stamping his feet. Sohail pulled Helen close and whispered in her ear, ‘He’s one of mine, from Pakistan, from Punjab.’

The young man, stamping his feet and shivering in his inadequate coat, held up a packet of the chestnuts.

‘I’ll try some,’ said Helen. She took a euro from her purse and paid.

They emerged from the little park onto the sidewalk and could see down the Champs-Elysées to the Arc de Triomphe, humped unnaturally large over the avenue.

‘There’s a line from Merrill,’ said Sohail, ‘it’s on the tip of my tongue, something about a “honey-slow descent of the Champs-Elysées.”‘ Sohail had an excellent memory, which had compensated for his indifferent work ethic in law school. After a moment, he began reciting.

Back into my imagination

The city glides, like cities seen from the air,

Mere smoke and sparkle to the passenger

Having in mind another destination

Which now is not that honey-slow descent

Of the Champs-Elysées, her hand in his,

But the dull need to make some kind of house

Out of the life lived, out of the love spent.

He finished and sat down on a bench. The sun had come out brightly.

‘That’s beautiful, sweetie. Say it again.’

While he recited she looked at him, his handsome dark profile, and ran her hands through the thick black hair at the nape of his neck.

‘What does it mean?’ she whispered.

The next night was Christmas Eve, and Rafia had gotten tickets for the ballet, Sleeping Beauty at the Garnier. Helen changed first her dress and then her shoes, so that when they arrived at the Opéra they found the Harounis waiting in the lobby, Rafia wearing a midnight blue sari of shot silk, a long heavily worked pashmina shawl, and earrings made from cabochon emeralds, green drops large as grapes. Mr. Harouni looked at his watch pointedly.

‘It’s fine, darling,’ said Rafia, in response to Helen’s apologies. ‘We’ve been people-watching. The clothes are wonderful.’

Helen had settled on a pale apricot dress and ornaments that Rafia had given her as an early Christmas present, dangling white earrings. Her agitation was reflected in her girlish brimming face.

Rafia smiled, showing her dimples. ‘You make me wish I were twenty again.’

They moved up the stairs among the crowd, Helen very conscious of her long dress, afraid she would trip on the hem, particularly in the reflected attention drawn by Rafia.

The Harounis had the center box in the second loge. ‘You ladies sit in front,’ insisted Mr. Harouni, standing in the vestibule at the back of the box and placing his Burberry overcoat carefully on a hanger.

Helen protested and then gave in, arranging herself into one of the small, uncomfortable chairs upholstered in the same muted red velvet as the walls. The musicians in the pit were warming up, the sharp sounds of the string instruments cutting through the murmuring of the crowd.