Nuruddin Farah - Hiding in Plain Sight

Bella sits up with a worried look. “Maybe Marcella called me on my Italian mobile number, which has been turned off since my arrival here. And Marcella hates e-mails so we’ve never communicated that way. We always use the telephone. That is typical Marcella, seventy-five and still volunteering in a Rome hospital. And you know what? She delivered me. Anyhow, what message did she leave?”

“She said to tell you, ‘ Come mai ti sei perduta? ’”

Bella asks Gunilla, “Do you know what that means?”

“My Italian isn’t perfect, but I thought she was telling you that you should be getting in touch with her. You’re lost or something, perduta ? No?”

Relieved, Bella relaxes. She will call Marcella in the morning. And now Gunilla reverts to more Swedish ways. They chat and drink some more as if one or the other of them were going to go away at the break of dawn, never to be seen again. Gunilla promises that each glass will be her last, but they keep unearthing memories and anecdotes about Aar that they want to share. They page through the album together, Aar’s photos inspiring further recollections.

Eventually, they are too exhausted to talk, and Bella offers Gunilla a place to sleep, but Gunilla declines. “No,” she says. “I’m sober enough, and tomorrow I have to work. I’ll call you to let you know I got home okay.”

“Till tomorrow, then,” says Bella.

Later Bella starts to retrieve Aar’s computer from under the mattress, but she can’t bear the notion of any more incursions into his privacy tonight. Granted, she knows many things about him that no one else knows, but it is also increasingly evident to her that there are many, many things he did not tell her and that there are even things he didn’t want her to know.

She leaves the laptop where it is and goes into the bathroom to brush her teeth. Just as she comes out of the bathroom, Gunilla rings. She has arrived safely, thank you. And with relief in her mind, Bella sets the alarm and goes to sleep.

Today, things are not going swimmingly for Valerie. She is not getting anywhere with her plan to ease her way back into Salif’s and Dahaba’s hearts. She speaks to Dahaba, when the girl is at Fatima and Mahdi’s, and makes an attempt to woo her with the pleasant-sounding idea of a trust in her and Salif’s names. But Dahaba says she doesn’t understand what “trust” means in this context or how it works to her and Salif’s benefit, and suggests that Valerie discuss the matter with Salif, “who is smart and bound to know the legal and other ramifications.” She then adds, “And please remember to talk about the matter to Auntie Bella, who, so far as I know, is our legal guardian.”

It is evident from Dahaba’s choice of vocabulary that she has a better grasp of legal matters than she claims. It’s also evident that she is not keen on taking a position on what her mother is suggesting. She signs off with a quick and unconvincing “Take care, Mum, I love you,” then runs off to join her friends, and gives her mobile phone to Salif.

Salif is very short with Valerie when she speaks to him, partly because it is the second time she has interrupted him during this visit with his friends. The first time she interrupted his chess game with Zubair, and when he went back to the game, he could not regain his focus and he lost to Zubair — Salif hates losing a chess game to Zubair, of all people! This time he is even more annoyed as he immediately suspects that his mother’s latest move is nothing short of a ploy to cheat him and his sister out of their rightful assets. “You are scheming to sabotage the smooth running of our lives in any way you can,” he tells her curtly, “and we won’t buy into it.” Then, just as Dahaba did, he makes kissing sounds into the phone, saying, “ Arrivederci , Mum,” and hangs up.

Padmini, who stood by yesterday afternoon listening in on Valerie’s conference calls with her lawyer and Gunilla, is of the opinion that both the lawyer and Gunilla were less than enthusiastic about the idea of creating a trust. In her view, Gunilla, in fact, seems biased in favor of Bella. Padmini suggests that it was foolish of Valerie to suggest herself immediately as the trustee. In her opinion, Valerie should have made no mention of the trusteeship at all at the outset.

“I have to be the principal trustee,” Valerie insists.

“Why?” Padmini asks.

“Because I am the only living parent.”

“If that is what you are trying to do, then you better get the children on your side, especially Salif, who is no fool.”

Now, with the telephone dead in Valerie’s hands after Salif has rebuffed her, Padmini says, “This is not working out, darling, so give it up.” And as if in accordance with Valerie’s sense that the hotel room has started spinning, a glass precariously balanced on the edge of the nightstand falls to the floor, spilling the dregs of last night’s liquor and shattering on contact with the hard wooden floor.

But Valerie is as dead to the world outside her head as she is alive to the obsession that has taken hold within it, the idea that she believes will allow her to play a part in her children’s lives, giving her a chance to make up for her earlier failings. Padmini says nothing, because she knows from experience that when Valerie is in the grip of an idée fixe there is no convincing her of anything she doesn’t wish to hear and that Valerie, being Valerie, will not give up the hope of achieving her ambitions until either success dances attendance upon her or she stares into the ugly face of defeat.

Padmini comes from a traditional background of the Southeast Asian variety — never mind that she was born in Uganda and raised in Britain. She was brought up in a monogamous household — never mind if her parents’ arranged marriage was a happy one or not. The fact is that the idea of unknotting the marriage ties linking her and her husband together was not only shocking but also unthinkable to either of her parents.

Valerie’s background, Padmini knows, is different. The lifestyle in which she was raised is of the European — that is to say, British — variety. Add to this her father’s career as an actor, his drunkenness, his infidelities, and his predatory sexual behavior, imposing himself on his young daughter. Valerie is unlike most women Padmini has known. She is a woman apart, a woman who sets her own tradition, different from everyone else’s, while claiming to be continuing that tradition into which she was born. Valerie had left Aar and her children to be with Padmini and before that had done the same to a number of other lovers, abandoning each as she started a liaison with another. So Padmini knew from the beginning not to be surprised if Valerie erred in her ways, whether with a man or a woman.

And yet Valerie and Padmini have always seen their rapport as special. Not for them the rows over betrayal that have caused several of the couples they know to go their separate ways. Or so it was until a few years ago in Cape Town.

They were visiting during Gay Pride Week, staying with like-minded friends in Simon’s Town. Padmini was so much in love with life in Cape Town that she suggested to Valerie that they consider relocating there. Valerie seemed to be falling in love with Cape Town too. She’d discovered a gym in Claremont that she liked, and she started going every day, returning later and later with an air of something different about her. When Padmini asked what was going on, Valerie had no explanations to offer. She said only, “We aren’t married, are we?”

Padmini went off her rocker. Such was her anger that she threw her mobile phone at Valerie. When she missed and hit the wall, shattering the phone, her fury reached epic heights. The fight escalated, with unforgivable words exchanged until finally Valerie shrieked, “You know what I like about her? Her cunt doesn’t stink.” She meant to inflict pain, and she did. Then words were not enough, and Padmini tore into Valerie, the two of them struggling like bitches in heat.