You mean — you loved him?
No, not love. But something like it.
What does that mean?
I mean, it was as if we were engaged, and then he disappeared. And I realized that it was my brother Salim’s fault. Salim was fond of a girl named Angèle. Her father, who gave himself the demeanor of a saintly man, said to her, I won’t marry you off until your big sister marries. I don’t know exactly what happened but suddenly Salim and Najib were gone. And then we heard they had opened a carpentry shop together in Aleppo. Salim did not dare to tell us anything. My mama said he got married on the run. But my mother knew everything anyway. The nun told her about a grand wedding in Aleppo, two sisters married off on the same day; she said Salim had convinced Najib to leave everything and come with him because the family was rich. I don’t know the details. Ask Musa, he knows it all.
When Musa had come home Milia was waiting for him. She had lit a candle and seated herself on the little sofa in the corner of the room to wait. Everything was asleep — everything and everyone but the girl covered in grief and shame. She put her trust in the darkness and waited, a fire burning inside her, feelings of jealousy squeezing her, and a painful emptiness hollowing out her body from her heart to her hip bone. How, she wanted only to know, how and why was it possible for everything to change in this way? And how had Najib managed to love two women at the same time? She told Musa that she was certain Najib loved her. Had he also loved that woman who became his wife?
Milia heard the story in broken fragments dropping from her brother’s lips. Everything turned to shadows. Najib became a shadow of Najib. The hand that had reached for her body became a black shadow of a black hand. Even that explosion she had witnessed on her fiancé’s face, like a reflection of her white breasts erupting in his eyes, became nothing more than a shadow. She said she no longer remembered anything of the story except for a few remnants which she saw occasionally in her dreams. What could she tell of it, then? Even the encounter in the garden, which left traces of red on her neck she recalled only as a dream. How could she tell Mansour what he wanted to hear that night? And why did he want a story that had died?
There are different kinds of stories, she told him. Two kinds — stories that end and stories that die. A story that has ended we bring back by telling it, and then it lives on with us. But a story that has died goes out like a lamp with no more wicking. How can a person read in the dark? You’re asking me to read in the dark and I don’t know how to do that.
She tried to tell him that story but it came out confused, lacking any sequence or causal connection. So he understood nothing and he was certain she was lying. He told her she was lying. What she almost said was, Fine, what do you want me to do? You want me to tell it all to you when I have forgotten, you want to know what happened when I don’t even know. What do you want me to say? Tell me and I’ll say it.
And then she did say it, anyway; she told him a dead story. She did not tell him about what had happened in the garden or about the deep scratches on her legs from the stinging nettles when she had to step back as Najib pressed himself on her. She did tell him about being betrayed.
She tried to explain to him the difference between stories that have ended and stories that have died. All families have at least one buried story that no one dares to unearth, she said. Her story with Najib was one of those, and she remembered it only in the form of muddled and disconnected scenes from old dreams which she could not organize into words. Here she began to recognize that she must stop talking like this, her words like a succession of images before her eyes. Otherwise the poor man would not understand anything at all. More than once he had admitted to her that he could not absorb or comprehend what she said. At first, his inability to follow had surprised her, but gradually it dawned on her that he did not understand because he could not glide with her to that subterranean place where words slipped and dove and circled. Words were Milia’s means of sliding effortlessly, from one word to another, or from a single word to a cluster of images. She was no longer capable, when she spoke, of regaining the thread where it first wound off the spool. For her, the thread had no end. She spoke as though wrapping threads over other threads, winding and unwinding spool after spool. Her sequences did not, could not, tie up any loose ends.
I cannot put your words together to make any sense, he complained. Words come in groups, they make sense as a group. I mean, they come together in the head and when they come out as words they form a meaning. But you — is this how you always talk?
In the Hotel Massabki when Mansour opened his eyes the next morning he moved close to the woman lying on her side and put his arms around her. He felt her cold feet and snuggled even closer. Turning his body in toward her he laid his hands on her hips. Milia closed her eyes and went very still inside. Her joints felt limp and she went into something like a trance. She would say that she had dozed off and remembered nothing; but at the time he heard her say something he could not make out because it was only a low murmur. When he got up to go to the bathroom and was ducking the shower as it careened between steaming and icy, he thought suddenly of Najib and the red tracings on Milia’s neck. But he decided not to bring it up. It was not very elegant for a man to ask his wife about another man on her wedding day. He whistled in the shower and called to her to come in and join him, but when he came out of the bathroom he found her sleeping. She was lying on her back, as though she were floating atop the pillow in which her face and long hair were submerged. He drew close to awaken her. She opened her eyes as if coming out of a very deep sleep. She smiled at him, turned on her left side, pulled the cover over herself, and went back to sleep. Mansour lit a cigarette, sat down next to her on the bed, and waited for her to reawaken. But she did not. He dressed and went down to the hotel lobby looking for the dining room. The elderly Wadiia scurried toward him and asked if he wanted eggs with his breakfast.
No, that’s not necessary.
But eggs are good for newlyweds, Mr. Bridegroom, said Wadiia II, who was suddenly there, as if she had just walked out of the wall.
Whatever, that’s fine then, he said, and sat down.
Striding over to him, the bald-headed driver clapped him lightly across the shoulders. The two Wadiias brought coffee, milk, and fried eggs, which they set down on the table, straightening up to stand in wait obediently beside the driver. He said he wanted to return to Beirut immediately. Mansour took some money out of his pocket and held it out with a thank you.
Wallaah inta jada’, said the driver admiringly. A real brave man you are! Look, when I think about how you walked through that fog with the snow pelting down, I can feel the cold seizing me from my head to the soles of my feet! Leaves me feeling terrified. How were you not afraid? A lion, not just any young fellow getting married, a true lion!
Mansour said nothing. He noticed the sarcastic smiles pulling at the lips of the two hotel maids. He saw now that they were eerily identical. Yesterday Milia had remarked that they looked so alike it frightened her. That Wadiia II would be the exact image of Wadiia I if it weren’t for the sloping shoulders and bowed legs. Mansour hadn’t noticed anything yesterday evening. Everything in him had quaked with cold; his bones seemed to be coming apart and he needed a warm bed and the darkness of his closed eyes immediately.