Jeannette warned him with a tremor of her head. No, said her lips.
“Later, I had planned to talk about it later.”
“Talk about what?”
“Nothing—nothing.”
“It is not nothing,” said Sylvain. “You have made two strange and aggressive accusations, Monsieur, and at the least you should explain yourself.”
“Your wife!”
“No,” said Jeannette. “No, Midhat.”
“My wife?” said Sylvain.
“No. His wife.”
“Midhat!” said Jeannette, shocked.
Something in Midhat broke. He tried to hold on. “He is a bad man,” he said. It surged up: “I saw—I saw, on your desk …”
“My desk?” said Molineu.
“I did not mean to enter, I did not mean, I was curious—forgive me!”
“There is no need,” said Jeannette, “to talk about this now. We are all excited. Let us collect ourselves.”
“No, Jojo, let him speak,” said Molineu, in a tone for addressing a child. “You went into my study?”
“Forgive me, I saw, on your desk …”
Alarm crossed Molineu’s face. “Midhat—”
“Do you think I have no insides?” He dropped a slack fist on the table. His spoon tipped, and lukewarm orange soup splattered over his hand and the tablecloth. He gaped down at the mess. Jeannette reached across with her napkin to wipe his hand.
“I can … I am only …” said Molineu.
“You have been studying me.”
“No, that is not it at all …”
“Do you think I am not, you think I am uncivilised?”
“I should have asked your permission, of course, I see that very clearly now—”
“Do you think I am uncivilised?”
“No! Heavens, no, I was, on the contrary, Midhat, I have been inspired by your presence, by your elegance, and your—humanity …”
“My humanity?”
“Yes! Yes, your humanity—please, let me explain. On the contrary, I have been aware of the stereotypes that abound in our, in European culture. I believe there is some progress to be made, in the study of civilisations—”
“Docteur Molineu,” said Midhat.
“No, let me speak. On the contrary, I am attempting in my research—a humble attempt, Midhat! A preliminary monograph, only! I have been, was attempting, on the contrary, attempting to humanise you!”
In came the tinkling of Georgine’s tray. Sylvain, nearest the kitchen door, shook his head at her, and she stopped and tinkled away again.
“To humanise me?” said Midhat, after a breath. “I am—really, I am amazed. Monsieur, I am a person. I am—no—” He stood. His napkin fell to the floor. “Excuse me,” he murmured. “I must go. Good night. Good night.”
They were talking as he left but he could not hear them. He grasped the banister and mounted, very slowly. The gallery rotated into view. At the top he heard footsteps, and Jeannette caught him before his bedroom door.
“Oh, Midhat,” she whispered. “I wish you hadn’t.”
“I’m sorry.”
He lowered his head, and her hands caught him on either cheek.
“I wish you hadn’t. Sylvain is …”
“I know about Sylvain,” said Midhat.
“What did you mean by that? Sylvain is a friend.”
He took a deep breath and stood upright. “I have reason to believe that he is at least one of the causes of the problem with your mother.”
Jeannette looked at him blankly.
“When I was searching for the possible reasons for her illness, for her great unhappiness, it seems that in most cases of nervous illness, there is an event that is the first cause of the degeneration. And I have reason to believe that Sylvain Leclair may have abused …”
Her face was not reacting. Doubt set in. He could not go back; he would remain firm, in this at least.
She dropped her gaze. “Oh, Midhat. You are wrong about him.”
“I am not wrong. He is a bad man. He does not have a clean heart.”
She shook her head. “No. Sylvain was a friend to my mother.”
“Listen to me.” He held her by the arms. “You are in danger from that man.”
“What?” Her eyes were sharp. “What is it you think you are doing?”
“Listen, Jeannette. I’m trying to—”
“No, Midhat. I said, you are wrong.”
With a slow, certain gesture, she turned her face to the side. And then, she shut her eyes.
Midhat waited, close to amazement. As if he had just watched a glass bowl fall and smash, and was not yet able to believe its shattered fragments were irrevocable, he clasped her arms, watching, waiting for her to turn back to him. She did not say a word. If there were any tension in her expression he could think it was an impulse of the moment, of passion, that would pass. But there was no clenched jaw, no tight lips, no tears. Only a quiet sadness, in those eyes that opened slightly and looked at the ground. She would not defend him against her father. It was broken. He had broken it.
The corridor began to change shape. The shadows flexed, as though a light were swinging to and fro on the ceiling and contorting them. He shook her once more, in desperation. The edges of the gallery were already blurring in his vision. Even this thing, this one thing, Jeannette, even she was far from him. He loosened his grip on her arms and stepped back. She did nothing to protest. It was obvious to him that he could no longer stay in this house.
PART TWO
1
As is often the case when a city is ancient, and the names of her tenants are centuries unchanged, the gossip carried on the winds between the two mountains of Nablus had settled over the years into legends. Tales of marriage abounded, and tales of rivalry, and of curses and charms cast by the Samaritans. And the cockerel sentenced to death for crowing on the mayor’s land, and the Moroccan hakawati who stole only gold jewellery, and the Bedouin prince who slept on his horse and shot his bullets at the sky.
One such story concerned a French Crusader queen of Jerusalem named Melisende, who inherited from her Armenian mother a pair of dark eyes and a love for riding in the sun. Her mother had borne no male heir, and on his deathbed the king her father divided the kingdom between Melisende and her son Baldwin. When Baldwin came of age he wanted the kingdom for himself, and for this purpose amassed an army to besiege his mother and force her into exile. Banished from the Holy City, Melisende spent the rest of her life in a palace at the centre of Nablus. Every day the prison guards let her go riding, and she would take her horse past Mount Gerizim, out to where the valley spilled into the fallow plain.
Eight centuries on, in the year 1915 by the Gregorian calendar and 1333 by the Hijri, the foundations of Melisende’s Crusader palace were still to be found near the mosque in the Yasmineh Quarter, and the land where she would go riding was now part of the village of Zawata. On that same piece of land lived a man named Haj Hassan Hammad, who in the heat of one August afternoon had just lain down in the shade of an olive tree when his wife came running down the lawn. A Turkish messenger had arrived, summoning him to a tribunal with Jamal Basha in Aley, a city twelve miles uphill from Beirut.