“What is this?” said Midhat.
“What is what?”
“Your father …”
“My father what?”
“He has been writing about me.”
Jeannette got to her feet. “What do you mean, writing about you?”
He turned back to the desk. Among the volumes there were two translated copies of the Quran. He passed the notebook with his name in it to Jeannette and picked up the first Quran, an old French edition bound in brown leather with a ridged gilt spine, entitled: “L’Alcoran de Mahomet Tom 1.” The second was a more recent translation in English.
“He has been studying me.”
She turned a page, and Midhat looked over her shoulder. One passage was large and legible.
The Effect of a New Language Learned by a Primitive Brain.
It is as if learning the word makes room in the mind for its meaning—its usage, nuance, connotation, and distinction—so that even if the word were forgotten, an indent in the surface of the mind would remain, an imprint, or cavity. Thus a wordless man may be capable of complex thought, except that he must once have learned to speak.
Jeannette did not move to turn the next page. They were silent.
“Did you know about this?” he said, after a moment.
“Of course not.”
“Do you … think … do you think I am …” His voice strained. “I must speak to him.”
He held the chair back for balance.
“Yes. I suppose you should.” She placed the book carefully on the desk. “Would you like me to come with you?”
“No. You and I—this is not the time for it. I need to sit down.”
Jeannette followed him to his bedroom. He sat on the bed as she watched from the doorway. Her eyes were red with suppressed tears.
“You can sit.”
He could not look at her. As her figure moved past he stared through the open door down the hall, where a light thrown from a window out of sight dispersed on the floorboards. He stared at the shapes framed by the door until they were estranged from his eye, and the banister became a woman’s arm, and the shadow in the far corner by the bathroom door a black shoe, with a long lace, which was in fact a shadowed gap where one of the floorboards had warped upwards.
He felt a cramp in his stomach. He was a guest, but the host had trespassed. And he too had trespassed, and transgressed, with the host’s daughter. Whose then was the crime? The spectre of his ignorance rose again before him. He thought he knew their public codes now, more or less—but the private ones? He had thought himself in the bosom of the family, capable—almost—of sitting in a chair in the study. He had thought his difference no difference. But if he was the father’s subject, how could he be the daughter’s husband? One did not study one’s sons-in-law.
Darkness was engulfing the view through the door, and the shadows widened and the light patches contracted, and the shoe in the corner disappeared in the pooling shade.
“Midhat?” Jeannette’s eyes were wide. “Midhat I just heard the door. They’re here.”
He heard himself respond.
“I should change,” she said. “They will have a drink first.”
She entered the field of the doorframe, moving in and out of light, and then she was gone.
He moved slowly. He put away his books and notes on their shelf in the cupboard, and pulled off his examination robe. He dressed himself in a dark grey suit, with a silver tiepin and a butterfly brooch on his lapel. He looked at his reflection in the mirrored door of the armoire. He tried to see what Frédéric saw. Something moved. It was the reflection of a branch from the garden tree, wagging in the breeze like a shaken arm.
In the hall the floorboard creaked; he opened the door and saw Jeannette at the top of the stairs. She wore a dark yellow gown with black lace over the shoulders.
“Come down,” she said.
“I will wait, and come after.”
Sylvain Leclair and Docteur Molineu were already at the table when he entered. Sylvain was beside Jeannette, and a place was set for Midhat beside the Docteur opposite her.
“Good evening Monsieur Midhat,” said Sylvain.
“Good evening, Monsieur Leclair. Docteur. Mademoiselle.”
Leclair had lost some weight since he last came for dinner in the spring, though he was still large, and his face sagged slightly. His pointed eyebrows were grey; for some reason Midhat had remembered them black.
“Well. You will have to forgive us for the simplicity of the meal,” said Docteur Molineu to Sylvain. “I’m afraid we were unable to find any fowl or meat. But we do have butter, so hourra for that.”
Georgine brought bowls of pumpkin soup, and Molineu poured the wine.
“You have finished your examinations, I understand?” said Sylvain.
“Yes, I have finished.”
“And they went well?”
“I hope so. We shall see.”
They sipped from their spoons. Jeannette ripped a bread roll and began to butter it.
“And when will you be returning to your country?”
The spoons were silenced. Even Jeannette turned her head.
“When will I be returning?” Midhat heard a tremor in his voice. “Soon, possibly.”
“And will you practise medicine in your hometown?”
“Will I what? Oh … I don’t know …”
Molineu reached for the butter dish.
“I was sorry to hear about your friend,” said Sylvain.
There was no reason why this above all should have been the statement to provoke him. It may simply have been that Midhat was already primed to react. But in a quick moment, his anger gushed and rendered him wordless, filling the front of his head like a wall of water. When he finally managed to speak, his entire body was shaking, and he could only whisper.
“Who are you?”
“Monsieur Kamal,” said Jeannette, “are you all right?”
“Am I all right? Am I all right? That man, that man … Mademoiselle, I am afraid to tell you, but that man … he is a worm and a, a thief.”
“A thief?” said Frédéric.
Sylvain laughed. “I am afraid I have set him off,” he said in a high, ludicrous voice. “Your guest is feeling guilty, perhaps, that his compatriots are at war with us and have killed our friend.”
“You are disgusting. You have no respect for women, or for anything that is sacred.”
“Midhat,” said Jeannette.
She had blanched. Midhat felt a blast of panic—her love for him so precious, so fragile, so long earned—and what control he had gained over his own voice was lost in an instant.
“No—This man, he is a cancer, he has slipped into the heart of your family. But I know him for what he really is.”
Sylvain met his eye. “You know nothing.”
“Calm down, Midhat,” said Molineu. “You are—I think you should calm down.”
“You!” said Midhat.
He looked at Jeannette again: her eyes were shiny with tears. It was the wrong time; he breathed, he steadied himself.
“What on earth is wrong?” said Molineu.
“Wrong! What is wrong, I … I …” The orange bowl blurred in his vision. “I have found … I had planned to talk to you … about this …”