For yourself. Always yourself. You think that is very brave. I must tell you something. You only know how to be responsible for yourself here — this place, your café friends, your country where you have everything. I can’t be responsible. I don’t want it.
He saw, could not stop himself seeing — everything change in her. All that she had been to him, the physical oneness, the tenderness, the expression of her whole being that had concentrated in the hours with lawyers, the humiliations suffered before the indifference of official communications, the recognition of him as the man he knew himself to be beneath the nobody with a false name — this possessed her face and body in revelation. And his words I don’t want it struck the staggering blow.
You don’t want me.
Not for her to speak those words; he heard them as she had heard them. Nothing for her to say; she knows nothing. That is true but he sees, feels, has revealed to him something he does not know: this foreign girl has for him — there are beautiful words for it coming to him in his mother tongue— devotion. How could anyone, man or woman, not want that? Devotion. Is it not natural to be loved? To accept a blessing. She knows something. Even if it comes out of ignorance, innocence of reality.
The capacity returned to him, for this foreigner makes him whole. That night he made love to her with the reciprocal tenderness — call it whatever old name you like — that he had guarded against — with a few lapses — couldn’t afford its commitment, in his situation, must be able to take whatever the next foothold might offer. That night they made love, the kind of love-making that is another country, a country of its own, not yours or mine.
Chapter 15
With the acceptance of love there comes the authority to impose conditions. They have never said the worn old words to one another, for her they are bourgeois clichés left behind; or perhaps it is because each would need a different vocabulary in their two languages. But there is a consequence common to both: if you love me you will want to do as I say, or at least make concessions to please me. It was right that she must inform her father of her decision. The idea filled her with dismay. He insisted. She lived through the whole scene in advance, and the actuality bore this out: she went alone and sat on the terrace where the Sunday lunches were held and the intention she announced gained preposterousness by nature of the setting in which it was heard. You have always lived your own life and in my love for you I have respected this although at times it has caused me concern — and hurt, yes hurt. You lack consideration for what you do, indirectly, to your family, I suppose I’ve spoilt you, this happens with one parent or other when there’s a divorce. My fault. Be that as it may. Many times I have had to stand by, ready to support you, catch you when you crash, and breathed again only when you’ve recovered your senses. I’ve never thought the people you mix with worthy of you — don’t smile, that’s not to do with money or class — but I’ve always thought as you grew older you’d find that out for yourself. Make something of your life and all the advantages you’ve had — including your freedom. You’re nearly thirty. And now you come here without any warning and simply tell us you are leaving in a week’s time for one of the worst, poorest and most backward of Third World countries, following a man who’s been living here illegally, getting yourself deported— yes — from your own country, thrown out along with him, someone no-one knows anything at all about, someone from God knows what kind of background. Who is he where he comes from? What does he do there? What kind of family does he belong to? What we do know, everyone knows, is that the place is dangerous, a country of gangster political rivals, abominable lack of health standards — and as for women: you, you to whom independence, freedom, mean so much, eh, there women are treated like slaves. It’s the culture, religion. You are out of your mind. What more can I say. You choose to go to hell in your own way.
And now he suddenly looks old, her father, helpless in place of anger, it’s a tactic he’s used before, but she’s thankful her lover isn’t with her to see this.
The encounter was almost but not quite as bad as she had prepared herself to meet with the unchallengeable confirmation of the two air tickets — no authority remains in the father’s love to cancel those — because it seems there is another crisis in the family, one she had not heard of until now.
— My daughter and my brother … What more could hit us. Both in danger. You’ve always been attached to your uncle, he’s the one you went to over this whole business of yours, I believe, didn’t you. Do you know what’s happening to him, do you? But you’re turning your back on all that consists of your life.—
When she quickly demands: —Archie — Archie ill? — her father gestures to his wife. — Danielle had better tell you, it’s better explained by a woman, you know more about the background to these things.—
After Danielle has said what she was deputed to say, and the daughter had left with an awkward embrace barely accepted by her father, Danielle went over to him and from behind his chair substituted her own embrace about his shoulders. — What did you expect. The kind of people she’s always been mixed up with. That Sunday when she brought him, I sensed trouble. This one’s not like the others.—
Chapter 16
Dr Archibald Charles Summers has been in medical practice for the best part of half a century.
After 41 years your professional ethics are immutable, like love; you’ve always lived by them.
For 41 years the boundless opportunities of the gynaecologist were there, his harem of beauties passed literally through his hands. That afternoon as every afternoon in consulting hours the anteroom where they waited on his summons was full. His girls. On this day one or two among them were new acquisitions, no doubt brought there by the faith of others in the understanding and healing powers of their ‘Archie’. The newcomers were identifiable because they were busy under instruction from the serene and elegant Farida at Reception, filling in forms with personal details. Farida remembers well — trust her efficiency — the two women, one the kind coming along with a first pregnancy, and the other, age on her form set down as 35, a youthful-looking woman— well-endowed in every sense (Farida’s image of her, later), expensive clothes and rings, breasts soft as marshmallows falling together in the scoop neck of her dress as she leaned to write. Her appointment was early on the list and she did not have to wait long. Farida knows all kinds: this was one of those who feign not to be aware that there is anyone else, any woman other than herself, in the space around that self. She had not brought a book with her, as the intellectuals do, nor did she delve into her handbag or pick up and toss aside one magazine after another, as others do. One of the tense and haughty ones, plenty on their minds.
When shown into the doctors room she greeted him as with relief at getting away to find herself with an equal. She sat back confidently in the chair across from his desk furnished with friendly tokens of patients’ gratitude, malachite paperweight, embossed diary, clutch of gilt and silver pens, miniature calculator, two statuettes, copies of some god and goddess — he was at once interrupted by an urgent phone call, and she picked up one of the sacred objects and turned it, smiling. As he ended the call with a gesture of apology, she replaced the god. — Like the good Doctor Freud you enjoy having ancient art around you.—
— They are nice, aren’t they. The Greek period in Egypt, I’m told.—
— Well, I’m sure they’re a necessary change from the present with the troubles of people like me.—