The teasing began:
“Since when does that cocona wake up so early in the morning?”
“The power of love!”
“Just don’t let her get attached. A Christian!”
“Not Christian, Coptic,” Grandma corrected, but deep inside she knew the difference was insignificant.
“The Copts are Christian.”
“The Greeks are Christian!”
“So what are the Copts?”
“Copts.”
“Christian or Copt, they’re all the same — they do not love the Jews!”
“Shh, watch your tongue, Madame Marika. Madame Murad might hear you …”
They all left the house and flocked to the sidewalk. The sounds of chatter rose to the sky. Robby and Victor were home alone. The slamming of the doors still echoed through the hall, mixing with the ticking of the grandfather clock.
Without a word, the two of them dropped their pants and began rolling around on the carpet.
Doorbell. Claude and the Ephraim brothers joined in, silent and understanding as co-conspirators, wasting no time on meaningless talk. The shutters were closed. Through the dark, sounds of laughter resounded. Victor proposed asking Louis to join in as well. Robby refused vehemently. He recalled his skinny, fragile friend and his sad eyes. He wanted to leave him out of it, to protect him from sin.
After they were satisfied and a bit nauseous, someone suggested going to the beach. A redeeming idea: a purifying dip; a quick one, because Claude had to get going.
“Then go,” said Victor. “Who’s keeping you?”
“My clothes … they’re at your house.” He had borrowed a bathing suit from Robby.
Victor growled unhappily
“What are you getting angry about, like an idiot?” said Robby. “You can stay, I’ll go with Claude. I’m sick of this sea anyway.”
Victor looked at them suspiciously, but did not argue.
At home, while they undressed, dimples appeared in Claude’s cheeks.
Robby understood and answered with a smile: Why not?
It was all done quickly, with haste. Claude was excited, knowing that his mother was already waiting for him, worried. Robby was happy to do this behind Victor’s back. Claude asked Robby to come over sometime. “But without that Victor!” he said in his voice, which was too high for a boy his age.
Then Robby was left alone and sat down to draw. What should he draw? That was always the question. He never thought to draw anything he saw around him. What would he draw? He picked up drawings left behind by his two brothers who went to Israel, and began “correcting” them and giving them titles as his vandal imagination saw fit. The wonders of boredom!
If children in Alexandria were allowed at the horse races, Victor might have never taught Robby a chapter in sodomy, and his brothers’ drawings might have preserved their chaste beauty.
His sister walked in and showered him with loud kisses, which she called ventouses, cupping. She called him mon petit Didi, or worse, ma petite fille—my little girl. Robby was never happy to hear the latter, and in his naivety sometimes even tried protesting, but whenever he did so, he was told the same story:
It was the end of December, and everyone prophesied that the baby wouldn’t be born before the new year. The ninth month had gone by, and still we were waiting for a miracle.
“Why should he hurry to come out into a world of suffering?” asked Madame Marika philosophically, and shoved a piece of Turkish delight into her mouth — heaven for the tongue and hell for the teeth. Her plump face, shifting as she chewed the candy, did not seem to be in a world of suffering. But that year there was a war going on in Egypt and all over the world. The worst was behind us. After El Alamein, it was clear the war would be over in just a few months, possibly even weeks. Maybe the baby would be born into peaceful times? A new year, a year of peace … A baby, born in January, making his first steps through the world, hand in hand with the new year … Then, in the end of December, as Alexandria became a forest of Christmas trees and artificial snow fell in store windows (the only snow to be found in Egypt was that ever-prevalent cotton); as British and Australian soldiers walked the streets, drunk, singing Christmas songs and missing their faraway homes; as the sea hummed and swelled, and drops of its seething foam reached all the way to the balconies on Rue Delta — at that very moment, the contractions began. It had been eleven years since Robby’s mother gave birth to Robby’s sister, and she wasn’t sure these were indeed contractions. Doctor Lachover was called. He whispered with her in the bedroom, and finally determined in his throaty, nasal voice, plagued by moments of falsetto (his French was tinted with an eastern European accent), “Yes, this is it. Would the lady please join me, I shall drive her to the maternity ward in my car.”
“Doctor, it’s going to be a girl, right?” asked Robby’s eleven-year-old sister.
The doctor patted the child’s head and mumbled something unclear about the mysteries of nature and God’s will.
Then Grandma told the famous folktale of the rabbi who, whenever asked to foretell whether a baby would be a girl or a boy, always said, “A boy, Madame, a male child. Mazal tov!” while hiding behind the door a note that read, “Girl.” If a boy was born, the rabbi humbly accepted praise; if a girl was born, as sometimes happened, the righteous rabbi would open the door with fanfare, and with a mysterious grin pick up the note and present it knowingly, saying, “I knew it was a girl …” sigh, “but I didn’t want to upset good people. I thought, maybe a miracle would happen? But I hid the truth behind this door, like a truth at the gate. What is left but to celebrate our all-knowing God?” Grandma summed up, “And what’s left for us to do but to celebrate the genius rabbi?”
“I’m no genius and no rabbi,” the good doctor demurred, “but even I can risk it and tell you it will be …”
“A boy!” called Grandma.
“A girl!” cried her granddaughter.
“Forget it!” said the doctor in English, washing his hands of prophesies.
“If it’s a girl,” the child vowed with her eyes closed, “she will be my doll. I’ll toss all my dolls to the sea, or give them away to poor people.”
When she heard the baby was a boy, she cried inconsolably. This is why she continued to call her brother ma petite fille. The grownups could do no more than to guess how his years serving as his sister’s petite fille affected his mind and personality.
“Where have you been?” Robby asked once the tirade of kisses was over.
“Where have I been?” his sister asked with a smile. “Where everybody’s been.”
“At the race! Then who won?”
She smiled ironically and said, “You’re dying to hear that David won, aren’t you? You’re dying for me to marry him, aren’t you?” She shoved a finger under his arm and began tickling him.
“What’s it to me?” he tried to defend himself.
“It really is nothing to you, or to anyone else in this family, but everyone’s butting in, and especially your grandma!”
“Fine, don’t marry him. Just tell me, who won the race?” he asked impatiently.
“Well, what do you think?”
“Going by your smile, I’d say he lost.”
“You got it, genius,” she said and pulled off her dress. “It’s so hot today.”
“He lost, huh?”
“And you know who won?”
“That Arab!” Robby said hatefully.
She danced around in her slip, gyrating her hips and waving her dress over her head.
“Stop dancing in your underwear!” Robby said angrily. “Someone might walk in. They’ll all be back soon, won’t they?”