Текст книги "House of Sand and Fog"

Автор книги: Andre Dubus

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

 

Q UITE EARLY SUNDAY MORNING I CARRY TO MY SON’S ROOM A TRAY OFsugar and hot tea and I tell to him everything we face as a family. Esmail sits up in his bed with no shirt upon him, his eyes still heavy with sleep, his black hair uncombed. He drinks his tea and listens quite intently as I explain the young woman with whom he spoke on the grass Saturday afternoon. He looks away from my eyes.

“She said this is her house, Bawbaw-jahn. And it was taken away from her for no reason.”

“No, as I have just said, there wasa reason. She did not pay her taxes, Esmail. This is what happens when we are not responsible. Fardmeekonee? Do you understand?”

“Yes, Bawbaw.”

I do not like lying to my son, but I am certain if he knows the woman’s home was taken from her due only to bureaucratic mistake, he will not be able to keep all of this from Nadereh.

“Weown the home now, Esmail. We purchased it legally, and that woman has no right to harass us. This is why I do not want you telling to your mother any of these things. You know how easily she can become sick with her worries.”

“Moham-neest, Bawbaw-jahn. No problem.”

I nod my head and drink from my tea, weighing whether or not I should tell to him more, that I had planned for us to stay here until cooler weather began but now I feel compelled to sell and leave while it is still clear no one has legal recourse against us. And I enjoy sitting here with Esmail, discussing serious matters. It has been the nature of my life’s work to keep secrets, and to bear heavy responsibility for others. But oftentimes, I feel very tired and quite alone. And of course it is an important moment for Esmail, to have his father confide in him for the first time. My son sits straight in his bed, his brown shoulders pulled back while he holds his teacup and saucer and nods his head along with me.

“You know I must raise money for your university education.”

“I can get another paper route.”

“Man meedoonam, I know. And you must begin saving your money.”

“Yes, Bawbaw.”

“Tomorrow, people are coming to view this house for buying. If we are fortunate, we can make a large amount of money. Wish me bright eyes, son.”

“Will we have to move?”

“Yes, but we will have enough pool to live well, perhaps to buy more property or start a business.”

My son stares across the room at the blank screen of his computer, but I know he is not seeing this. I begin to regret telling him my affairs.

“Bawbaw-jahn?”

“Yes.”

“We were rich in Iran, weren’t we? Weren’t we pooldar?” He regards me as if he has not seen me in a long while, his mouth open slightly. I stand to leave.

“Yes and no, son. Yes and no.”

IT IS MY belief people feel more free to spend their money in good weather, so I am disappointed today, Monday, with its gray sky and its fog bank along the beach. From the widow’s walk I can see no ocean, only a whiteness down beneath the rooftops of Corona. Also, my first appointment telephoned to cancel, stating they had seen a property over the weekend they could not turn down. I tried to talk the gentleman into at least seeing my bungalow, but he was not to be moved.

At noon Soraya arrives to take Nadi to lunch. My daughter is dressed tastefully in a skirt and blouse and jewelry, her black hair held back with a silver ornament. I am on the roof as she steps out of the car and waves and blows to me a kiss. This morning she told Nadi on the telephone she is enjoying decorating their new condominium in Mountain View, over one hour’s drive south of us. And she is a good daughter to have driven so far to lunch with her mother at a fine restaurant in San Francisco. I did not tell Nadi of my appointments today, and I am grateful she will be gone from the house.

After they leave I descend the stairs to ask Esmail to do the same, to leave, but he has already disappeared, his skateboard gone as well. I suspect he is making friends with the local young people along the beach here. Now the bungalow is empty and silent and for a brief moment I feel quite lost standing in its rooms without my family. I inspect it once more for order and cleanliness, but I need not worry. Nadi takes care of every room as if we are expecting special guests each day.

 

L ES WOKE ME BEFORE DAWN MONDAY MORNING WITH A CUP OF THATtoo-hot cowboy coffee from the woodstove. The Coleman lantern was turned low, not even hissing, and in the shadows I could see he was in his uniform, with his badge and gun, his hair combed and still wet from the river. He squatted on one knee at the corner of the mattress and said he’d heated me up a basin of water to clean up in, I could stay here or he could drop me off at the Eureka to get my things.

“Get my things?”

He glanced down at his hands. “If you want to.”

“I do, Les.” I nudged his back with my foot. “You’ve got a weird way of asking, though.”

“I’m shy, Kathy.” He smiled, then stopped. “Will you know how to get back here on your own?”

“Yep.” I dressed in front of him, then peed in the dark woods and brushed my teeth on the porch, using a cup of warm water to rinse my mouth.

On the drive back to San Bruno, Les told me about the two lawyers he knew in town who would get me back into my house in no time. The sky was beginning to lighten, though it was gray and the beaches seemed to be one long fog bank. I sat there in the passenger’s seat with my feet up on the dash feeling almost confident that everything would get worked out. At the motor lodge Les paid the bill and carried my suitcase to my car. We kissed goodbye and promised to meet back at the fish camp by seven o’clock tonight. He said to be careful driving that luxury car of mine up the pine trail, then he was gone.

I sat in my car a few minutes and smoked a cigarette, flicking my ashes out the window. I was starting to feel jittery, though I’d only had half a cup of Lester’s coffee, and my fingers were shaking a little as I smoked my second cigarette though I’d meant to light just one. In Group, we’d coax all our snakes and gargoyles into the room and smoke our lungs sore and our eyes bloodshot while we got “clear” on everything else. And I knew to any of my counselors back East my life wouldn’t look very manageable: I was drinking again, and smoking; I was sleeping with a man who’d just left his family, all while I was supposed to be getting back the house I’d somehow lost. I knew they would call the drinking a slip, the smoking a crutch, the lovemaking “sex as medication,” and the house fiasco a disaster my lack of recovery had invited upon itself, and on me. In RR, it would be time to turn to self-control and self-worth reminders, use my powers of reason to tell myself how lovable I was, how I didn’t need to do anything dangerous because I’d be endangering a good person, me. I knew what all the rationally recovered assholes would say, but it wasn’t me loving me I was interested in. It was Lester loving me, he and I living on Bisgrove Street, both working during the day only to spend time together at night, snuggling in front of the TV, or else going to bed early to make love. And that’s what it was beginning to feel like, love.

Later, as I cleaned my Monday residential, running the vacuum over carpets, mopping the floor, you’d think my mind would be on my house for most of the day, but it wasn’t; it was Lester, his tall skinny gentleness, his smell—like sweet damp ground—the way he paid such attention to me. And I was thinking of kids again. I wanted to see pictures of his son and daughter. I wanted to know their ages, and their favorite snacks. I knew lots of men who’d started second families, had babies again when their first kids were almost on their own. But I was getting way ahead of us, wasn’t I?

Around noon, I picked up my mail at the post office, then went to a shopping center sandwich shop to sift through it all while I ate. It was only ten days’ worth but it took up all of my table, and I put it in two piles, one for the trash can on the way out, one to keep. The trash pile was mostly junk mail, the other was bills: car insurance, gas, my final phone and electric. The electric bill was the most recent and I opened it and read the cutoff date for the last billing period: just two days ago. I tore into my turkey sandwich and drank down some Diet Coke, and I shook my head at how fucked-up this was. It was the same with the gas bill.

My first thought was to call Connie Walsh again, but I knew she’d only tell me to call the utility companies and set them straight. I didn’t want to hear that. I pushed my sandwich away and lit a cigarette, looked out the window at the shopping center parking lot, at all the cars under the hazy sky. I was reaching for the ashtray when I saw the postcard in my bill pile, a glossy picture of the Hilltop Steak House back in Saugus on Route I. In front of the restaurant was a huge fiberglass cactus maybe fifty feet high, and all around it on a small fenced-in lawn were a dozen life-sized steers. I knew the card was from my mother and I took another drag and drank from my Coke before I started to read it:

Dear K,

Your telephone is out of order. Have you two got an unlisted?

Your aunts won two round-trip tickets to San Francisco. I may go with them Labor Day. Send me your new number.

Mother

I left the sandwich shop and stepped into a drugstore for a notebook. Back in my car, I wrote:

Hi Ma,

I’m sorry I haven’t called you. A bad earth tremor rolled through here last week and a tree hit the phone lines down the street. As soon as they’re fixed I’ll let you know. Also, that’s good news about your coming out here but Nick and I won’t be in town that weekend. He’s taking me on a business trip. Sorry to miss you.

K

I wondered if I should put in anything extra about the tremor, what it feels like to be in one, maybe, but then thought no, she wouldn’t expect that from me.

Then I wrote letters to the gas and electric companies explaining my situation, telling them to bill a Mr. Barmeeny instead of me. I drove back to the post office to mail them but when I dropped my mother’s letter into the box I felt as if I’d just heaved my last sandbag against rising water and there wasn’t much time left.

It was barely one o’clock and I had six hours to kill before I met Les back at the camp. I thought about going there early to make us a nice dinner, surprise him, but then I pictured myself trying to build a fire in the stove, not having an oven to use. And my specialty was casserole dishes; lasagna, veal and eggplant Parmesan. I decided to go to a movie instead, one or two weekday matinees at the mall Cineplex in Millbrae off the Camino Real. Last night, as we were drifting to sleep, my cheek on his shoulder, I asked him his kids’ names again. “Bethany and Nate,” he said, his voice full of gratitude. Then I asked him where his house was and when he said it was in Millbrae, in a housing development you had to drive by to get to the mall, I told him I’d probably driven past his house a dozen times, maybe I’d even seen his wife.

“Carol,” he said.

“Yeah. Carol.”

But now, instead of passing through San Bruno for the highway to Millbrae, I drove into foggy downtown Corona, then right up the long hill of Bisgrove Street. I wanted to pull over beside the woods across from my house and just look at it a few minutes, maybe remind myself of what was mine before I went off to numb my afternoon away in a dark theater. And I guess I didn’t really expect to see anyone there, but a station wagon was parked by the woods so I could only park near the house and I didn’t want to do that because there were people standing in my yard looking at my home: a man and woman and a young boy, maybe eight. He had his hands in his shorts pockets, and he was kicking one foot into the grass. His father’s hand was on his shoulder and they were all looking at what Colonel Barmeeny was pointing out to them, the new deck on my roof. The bald Arab wore a tie and a short-sleeved dress shirt that looked very white in the grayness. He glanced at me in my car, but then turned away as if he hadn’t seen anything. He was talking fast, officially, though I couldn’t hear his exact words through my open window. He looked back at me one more time before he led the young family up the steps to the roof for a view that must be foggy. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and a sick laugh rose up from my stomach: the fucking bastard was trying to sell my house!Then I just honked my horn, leaning on it with both hands. I looked straight ahead and I could feel the steering wheel vibrate. Two houses up, a woman stuck her head out her front door and stared. But I kept my weight on the wheel, letting that sound tear through the air until my wrists started to ache, and I let go and yelled through the window, “He can’t sell you that house! He doesn’t own it! He’s trying to fucking stealit! He’s trying to sell you a stolenhouse!”

The man was half-smiling like he didn’t know if this was a joke or not. He looked from me to Barmeeny, then back at me again. His wife stepped closer to her son, and the colonel’s face was still as stone. I pushed on the gas, sped up the hill, and turned around at the dead end. I drove back and honked the horn again. The colonel was standing near the railing talking to the man and woman, and now he nodded his head and pointed in my direction as if my noise proved some point he was trying to make. But I didn’t care what he said; I kept going, my hand pressed to the horn all the way down the hill.

 

N ADEREH RETURNED FROM HER AFTERNOON WITH SORAYA IN HIGHspirits. After their luncheon they had shopped, and Nadi was quite excited to show to me my new shirt and tie, the pants and sweatshirt she purchased for Esmail. She also pulled from her bags more tape cassettes of Persian music and she put one of them into the machine while she set about preparing our dinner. The music was most recent, and I did not like it. There were still the old instruments being used—the tar, kamancheh, and domback—but electric guitar as well, and the singer sounded to me like a whining child; I was surprised Nadi had chosen it. I watched her fill the rice pot with water from the sink, moving her head slightly in feeling with the music, and I pressed the machine’s off button. Nadereh turned her head to me immediately. “Nakon, Massoud. What is wrong for you?”

“You must not spend so much money, Nadereh.”

“It is not so much money,” she said in Farsi, smiling. “There are school sales now. Even your clothes, Behrani.” She walked to me, drying her hands upon her apron. She kissed my cheek, then pressed the music on once again and resumed her cooking. And I knew I could not tell her my worries. I knew I would prefer to have her this way, cheerful and innocent as a child.

BUT THERE WERE flames in my stomach, and now, after dinner, I sit upon my widow’s walk at the new table under the umbrella looking down over the rooftops and streets of Corona to the gray fog that enshrouds the beach and the sea. It is two or more hours to nightfall. I drink hot tea, strong from brewing in the samovar since morning, and I can hear my wife in the house below washing dishes in the kitchen sink. The sky and ocean are so gray and white as to be inseparable. I sit and think. I must weigh my options regarding this Kathy Nicolo, but my hand trembles, my mind roaming elsewhere, to Jasmeen, my cousin, who was nineteen years old and very beautiful. Her voice was low for a woman, but her body was long and thin, her hair quite thick and black, and when she thought something was humorous she would laugh without reservation, letting her teeth and bright eyes be seen by anyone. But she had an affair with an American oil executive, who they say was rich and quite handsome. She committed this in a townhouse which one of her own neighbors cleaned three times per week. Soon, all the village women knew she had given her girl’s flower away without marriage, without the blessing of God and the holy mosque, and to a married foreigner from the west. And it took a full month for the news to reach her father, my uncle, and her two brothers. My uncle was a trader in carpets, though not highly successful, while his only brother, my father, was a respected lawyer who would one day become a judge. When my uncle finally heard the gossip of the old khanooms, he did not believe it, but Jasmeen was not capable of telling lies well and so he knew it was the truth and he beat her. For two weeks he kept her locked in the home. He began to drink vodka nightly, at first with the neighborhood men, but he could not bear their silence so he drank alone, usually at his shop in the back room where the carpets hung from the walls or were stacked in long rolls in all four corners. My uncle rolled his own cigarettes and I imagined him smoking his black Turkish tobacco and drinking in the stillness and quiet of his office, the walls threatening to collapse upon him. He would return home very late, often in the early morning, pull Jasmeen from her bed, and beat her with his fists, crying, “Gendeh! Whore!” My aunt would sometimes attempt to stop him, but he would beat her as well, calling her, “Modar gendeh! Mother whore!”

On the first morning of the third week, his eldest son, Mahmood, returned home from the bazaar after having overheard five market women speak of the Behrani family, of the shame their kaseef daughter had brought upon their heads. It was a cold winter morning, and my uncle had not yet left for his shop. He sat by the woodstove with his tea and bread, though he took neither; he had once again not slept through the night and was still mast, drunk. My aunt had left the home early with Mahmood and she was at the bazaar, while my cousin Kamfar, the youngest child, sat at the wooden table with his morning’s schoolwork, and it was his brother who rushed into Jasmeen’s room and pulled her out. She was dressed in long white nightclothes, her hair loose and wild upon her shoulders, her small face bruised and swelled from the beatings. He brought her before their father and yelled he must do something. The family is disgraced, Bawbaw! We are all disgraced, because of this stinking GENDEH!Jasmeen struggled with her brother, cursing him, but he would not release her, and my uncle looked away from his son and daughter and stared into the fire as if he could not hear or see or smell anything around him. At last he stood. He left the room, and returned with his German-made Luger pistol. Jasmeen was still attempting to free herself from Mahmoud’s hands, but when she saw her father and his gun she began to scream until it seemed she could not breathe. She began to cry Kamfar’s name, but when he stood, his father pointed the gun and ordered him to stay seated. He took Jasmeen by the hair, and with his eldest son’s help, dragged her outdoors.

The ground was frozen but there was no snow. The house was only a short walk to the village square, and one could see the long bread and trinket tables of the bazaar, a cage of chickens, the butcher’s meat hanging from a timber. Already passersby stopped to view the spectacle of the carpet dealer pointing a pistol at his dirty kaseef daughter whose hands were held behind her by her bearded older brother who stood to the side, his eyes on the eyes of their father. The girl was in white nightclothes, her feet bare, already beginning to turn blue, her black hair hanging before her face as she cried so hard she was unable to speak. The men and women of the bazaar began to look as well, and perhaps they saw the youngest son run from the house just as his father pulled the trigger, the sound like the cracking of ice, a wisp of smoke entering the air, and the young beautiful Jasmeen, the gendeh, the whore, falling to the ground, curling herself up as if she were cold, moaning, then becoming quiet and with great concentration sitting up and pressing her hands to the hole in her chest. But in seconds the front of her gown was completely red and wet, and quite soon she lay still, her eyes open, steam rising from her wound into the early-morning air of Tabriz.

I hated my uncle, believing he had acted rashly and with too much passion. We are an educated family; we do not need to live as the peasant class, resolving our troubles with spilled blood. My aunt took Kamfar and moved to her family in the south, to Bandar Abbas, on the Strait of Hormuz. But none of her brothers or uncles would take revenge on Jasmeen’s killer. A man has the right, even the obligation, to protect his family name. Many years later, when I was married and Esmail was not yet born, Kamfar told to me the details of the story while we were mast with Russian vodka, and we both wept for Jasmeen. Soraya was a girl of eight or nine years and in my drunkenness I could not allow myself to even imagineraising merely an unloaded pistol to her. And over the years I have dreamed of Jasmeen in white falling to the ground, Mahmood standing over her as she attempted in vain to keep life from leaving her, pressing her hands to the torn opening between her breasts.

The hurting of women I have not approved of, though, yes, I have struck my wife on occasion, but I regretted each incident deeply. Once at our home in Tehran, I slapped Nadi’s face for raising her voice to me in the presence of a junior officer. Her eyes filled with sadness and humiliation and she ran crying from the room. Later that evening, when she would still to me not speak, I rolled up my shirtsleeve, lighted a Turkish cigar, and pressed the glowing ash into my flesh. I wanted to cry out but did not. I relighted the cigar and burned myself again. I did this five times, and I asked God for forgiveness with each burning of the flesh. The white scar on my forearm remains, and it is a reminder to me for controlling my passion, but today, when this woman Kathy Nicolo assaulted my buyers and me from her automobile, when I felt the sale of the bungalow begin to slip past me like the wind, I wanted to shoot her in the head; for with each of her false accusations, she was attempting to take from me not simply my future, but my family’s food and water, our shelter, our clothes. I explained to the gentleman and lady that this was a crazy woman, she knows nothing of which she speaks; I am pleased to show you all the paperwork for the sale of this home; Iam its proper owner. The man and woman regarded one another and then we spoke of other matters such as the proximity of the home to the beaches and San Francisco, the quiet nature of this street. The husband said they would telephone me with a decision, but I knew as I escorted them and the child to their family automobile, I had lost them.

Perhaps I should reconsider my decision to complete these dealings without a real estate agent. I have heard of many people who have put down payments upon homes after only viewing color photographs of the property in the Realtor’s office. This would allow me to not worry about this kaseef woman spoiling things.

But no, I cannot allow a salesman to take a heavy percentage of what is rightfully mine. I will wait for calls on the property and if this woman troubles me again, she will simply wish she had not. That is all. There is no more to consider.