“Would you like me to make it cooler?”
“No, no. The water’s really nice.”
She shook her head a little and then slumped down into the chair and Ralph finished his work. After having her hair dried Madame Nuha moved over to sit under Ahmad’s fingers. Ralph couldn’t keep his eyes off of her. He smudged Madame Ismail’s forehead with black hair color while he was dying it for her. Madame Ismail screamed and so Master Ahmad ran over and cleaned her forehead with cotton and cigarette ashes mixed with water. Ralph paid no attention. He stood behind Madame Ismail’s chair exchanging glances with Madame Nuha, who wasn’t paying any attention to him.
Two days later he bumped into her on the street.
Ralph was on his way out of work from the salon and she was walking slowly down the street. He said hello to her and walked beside her and then they went to her house. Nuha Aoun lived alone in an old house with high ceilings and a garden grown over with grass. The smell of wool seeped from the walls. Her only daughter was living in the States and would write to her telling her to leave Beirut and come live with her. Her husband, Mr. Najib Aoun, was a fabric merchant in the Souq Tawila. He died in 1976 of a heart attack, leaving her with a lot of money, a daughter, and some demolished shops in the business district of Beirut. Her daughter would write telling her mother to come to California, and her mother would answer saying she couldn’t leave Beirut. Her only friend was a French woman who was married to a Lebanese from the Shaheen family, and who worked in the French Cultural Center in Beirut. The husband had been kidnapped at the beginning of the war and the French woman kept moving between East and West Beirut waiting for her husband’s release. Then she left the country. Arlette lost hope and left, and Madame Nuha was left all alone. Madame Nuha knew all the neighbors in the quarter, but she felt incapable of adjusting to the new situation. She acted as if she were waiting for some unknown thing to happen. She wrote to her daughter saying she was waiting, that Beirut was a storehouse of memories, but she didn’t tell her the truth, and her daughter, who was living with her husband and two sons in San Francisco, couldn’t understand her mother. She wrote to her saying she didn’t understand, and that she’d given up on her.
Ralph didn’t understand either.
She told him she was waiting for something, and that she would go. “What about me?” he asked her.
She almost died laughing. “You, sweetheart,” she said, dragging out her words sarcastically.
“You, my son, see what the future holds for you. What do you want with me? I’m old enough to be your mother.”
He hugged her close to him and smiled. He smiled like someone who pretends he understands but really doesn’t.
Ralph was incapable of thought. This woman had taken him to the unknown. He slept with her every day, and felt as though she were drinking him and slurping him up. He’d go to her at eight o’clock at night, and they’d have dinner and then go to bed. The relationship was pure madness. She was a crazy woman. Her screams and moans engulfed Ralph’s body and senses while he was around her and under her and on top of her as if he were lost.
“I can forget everything,” he said to Rima after the story of Madame Nuha was over. He told her he could forget everything, but he didn’t forget that one night. The rain poured over the windows, and Madame Nuha was waiting for him. He said he didn’t know what happened to him, but he was like a child in her hands. She was the one who would take him and scream as he made love to her, but things would get away from him. She was everything, and he didn’t remember, she would rise and fall and pull him back and forth and move away.
That night she cried, Ralph said. Pain was everywhere. My joints ached. And she, she became more beautiful, no one was more beautiful. Beautiful and glimmering under the lights. She put on her pink robe and walked. around the house barefoot and started to sing. I stayed on the edge of the bed alone. I could feel her, but she wasn’t herself.
Ralph said Nuha was not Nuha.
“How could a woman be another woman?” Rima asked.
“I don’t know,” Ralph answered. “I swear I don’t know anything. I mean, I was there and she was there, but I wasn’t really there. Until now her voice rings in my ears. I hear it but I don’t understand. I feel like my body isn’t my body.”
“And with me, you don’t feel?” Rima asked.
“No, it’s different. You I love. With her it was pure lust. She controlled me. Not you, making love with you is like making love.”
Rima thought about the concierge, but she didn’t say anything.
And Husn didn’t say anything. He didn’t tell his father he killed the woman, Gandhi figured it out himself. He saw the smell of murder in his son’s eyes. It was the same smell he saw for the first time in the eyes of Zaylaa, who later turned into a lamb in the Montana. Gandhi thought he could fix the matter with the help of Doctor Atef, since Doctor Atef had important friends in high places and could save Husn from the gallows. But no one investigated the murder of Madame Nuha. An officer from the Hbaysh precinct came by and filed a report and the corpse was taken to American University Hospital. The crime was considered a casualty of the war. No one knew how or where Madame Nuha was buried. Some said they couldn’t find a grave for her and so they temporarily buried her in Mar Elias Btina Cemetery. Some said they couldn’t find a Maronite priest to pray for her, and so a Protestant minister temporarily prayed for her. This was the exact opposite of what happened to the White Russian woman Vitsky Novikova, who died as a maid and was buried as a queen.
Madame Sabbagha went half-crazy. She called the bishop of Beirut and stood in front of her house wailing. Everybody came, all the families of Ras Beirut attended the funeral of Vitsky Novikova. Heading the procession was the bishop of Beirut, the Reverend Amin, the leaders of the political parties, even the Soviet ambassador was planning to attend but couldn’t make it. The coffin was carried out of Mar Elias Church surrounded by women in black, incense burners, icons, and wreaths. Madame Sabbagha stood in front waving a black handkerchief; next to her was her stupid daughter who didn’t know how to talk. From then on people said Madame Sabbagha had gone crazy. She started following the Reverend Amin in the streets, ranting and raving about this and that scandal, until finally one of her relatives came along and took her and her daughter away. After that, no one heard anything about her.
Ralph didn’t want to kill Madame Nuha. He didn’t kill her. He told Rima she died, she slipped, hit her head on the bathtub, and died. Ralph said he carried her to her room because he thought she was still alive. Ralph was lying. “You’re a liar, Ghassan. You’re a murderer, and I’m afraid of you,” Rima said and left the house and never came back.
Ralph didn’t want to. Madame Nuha told him. He came to her in the evening as usual. He was still intoxicated with what had happened the night before, which he told Rima all about, and which even now he didn’t know how to tell. He came, ready as usual, to do all the things that made her laugh. Madame Nuha used to laugh a lot when Ralph stood up after making love with her and started imitating the Reverend Amin, his slow gait, the way he slurred every word that came out of his mouth, especially “You are the salt of the earth,” which was almost impossible to understand. He came only to find Nuha telling him, “It’s over”.
“What’s over?”
“It’s over, Ralph, my darling. I’m going to get married, we can’t do it anymore. I’m getting married next week. Please go.”
There was a new tone in her voice, as if she were about to cry.
“And what about me?”
“You? How do I know?”
“Who is he?”
“Constantine. Constantine Mikhbat, a well-known businessman, and my late husband’s friend.”