The Tiger's Wife

fountains. Those fountains—that is the sound of Sarobor, Sarobor always sounds like running water, like good clean water, from the river to the cisterns. Then there’s the old mosque, with that lonely minaret lit up like a shell.

I cross the Old Bridge, and I go down to the Hotel Amovarka, where your grandma and I spent our honeymoon before we found an apartment to live in. It’s where foreign dignitaries and ambassadors stay when they come to Sarobor. The director of the airplane factory in Marhan—the one we’re bombing—sometimes stays there for months on end. The hotel stands on this stone shelf at the river’s edge, banked by olive trees and palms, overlooking the water at the top of the cataract. It has these white-curtained windows and a balcony that looks like a woman’s skirt, all these round stone folds that come out over the water. There’s brass Turkish lanterns on the balcony. You can see the balcony from the Old Bridge, and if you take an evening walk from the hotel you can stand on the bridge and look down over the cataract and the balcony restaurant, where they have a four-man orchestra that goes from table to table, playing love songs.

Inside, the hotel has those wooden screens and red-and-white painted arches. It’s got the pasha’s tapestries hung up on every wall, and old wingback chairs and a fire in the lobby. I come in, and the place is empty, completely empty. I cross through without seeing anybody, not a soul, not even at the counter. I go down a long hallway, and then I find myself in the front room of the balcony restaurant.

There’s a waiter there, just one waiter. He’s got very little hair, and it’s all white and combed forward over his head, and he’s got a big black bruise on his forehead, clear as day, that devout Muslim bruise you can always recognize. He’s strapped into his suit, and he’s got his tie on and his napkin over his arm. He sees me come in and he lights up. Like he’s thrilled to see me, like it’s the best news of his day that I am there. He asks me if I want dinner, and he says it in a way that is intended to encourage me to stay even though no one else is having dinner, and I say yes, I want dinner, I want dinner, of course. I am thinking of my honeymoon, and I am thinking they have lobster there, all kinds of fish they bring up on riverboats from the sea.

“Where would sir like to sit?” he says to me, and he gestures around the room. The restaurant has a high, yellow ceiling with a battle painted on it, and these brass lanterns and red curtains hanging from the ceiling, and the whole room, like the rest of the hotel, is completely empty.

“On the balcony, please,” I say. He leads me out to the balcony and seats me at the best table in the house, which is made up for two, and he takes away the other fork and knife and napkin and plate.

“With apologies, sir,” he says to me. He has this hoarse, rasping voice, even though I can tell from his hands and his teeth he’s never smoked a day in his life. “We have only the house wine tonight.”

“That will do just fine,” I say.

“And we have it only by the bottle, sir,” he says. I tell him to bring me the bottle, and also that I will be staying the night, if he would be so good as to find someone at the front desk who can help me. I know you’re thinking this is not a good idea. I know you’re thinking, those men shelling over the hill are getting ready to come down on Sarobor in the morning. But staying is my plan at the time, and so I say that to him, maybe also to be kind. He is a very old man. And you don’t know what our waiters used to be. How they were trained for the old restaurants. They would go to a school, the finest table-service school, right here in the City. They learn their craft, they learn their manner. They’re practically chefs. They can recognize a wine with their eyes closed and carve up the carcass themselves, they can tell you what fish swims where and what it eats, they dabble for years in herb gardens before they’re permitted to serve. This is the kind of waiter he is, and a Muslim besides, and the whole thing makes me think of your grandma, and I feel ill, suddenly, watching him leave to get my wine.

I sit back and I listen to them down in Marhan. Every few minutes this blue blast lights up the hilltops at the crown of the valley, and a few seconds later comes the cracking sound of the artillery. There’s a southerly breeze blowing down to me through the valley, and it brings in the singed smell of gunpowder. I can see the outline of the Old Bridge on the bank above the hotel, and a man is walking up it from the tower on the other side, lighting the lampposts the old-fashioned way, the way it’s been done since my time. The river is making a song against the bank under the hotel ledge. I am leaning forward a little to look through the florets in the balcony railing down to where the water is dark against the white rocks of the riverbed. When I lean back, I notice the smell of cigarette smoke nearby, and I look around, and—to my surprise—there is another guest sitting at a table in the opposite corner, with his elbow up on the stone balcony rail. He is wearing a suit and tie, and he is reading, holding the book up so I cannot see his face. The table in front of him is empty, except for a coffee cup, which makes me think he has finished his dinner, and I feel glad he will be leaving soon, he will be finishing his coffee and leaving. He seems completely unaware of the way the bombing is lighting up the sky—like it’s a celebration, like fireworks are happening over the hill and the celebration is coming closer. Then I find myself thinking—maybe it is a celebration for him, maybe he has crossed the river tonight to gloat in the old Muslim palace. Maybe, for him, this is something funny, a night he will talk about years from now to his friends when they ask him about sending the Muslims downriver.

At this moment, the old waiter comes back, bringing with him my bottle. I can remember it now. It’s an ’88 Salimac, from a famous vineyard that will soon be on our side of the border. He serves it to me like that means nothing to him—and I get the sense that he is bent on showing the great strength of character it takes for him to serve me this wine like it doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference to him whether or not the owner of the vineyard is bayoneting his son in the airplane factory right now. He peels the foil off the top of the bottle, and then he uncorks the wine in front of me. He flips my glass and pours me a little, and he blinks at me while I taste it. Then he pours me the whole glass and leaves the bottle on the table. He disappears for a moment, and then he comes back, wheeling in front of him a cart that’s covered in big lettuce leaves and bunches of grapes, slices of lemon, all of which are crowded around a centerpiece of fish. The fish are clear-eyed and firm, but they look like something out of a circus.

The waiter says to me: “Well, sir. Tonight we have the sole, the eel, the cuttlefish, and the John Dory. May I recommend the John Dory? It was freshly caught this morning.”

There are not very many of them, not very many fish—perhaps five or six, but they are neatly arranged, with the two eels curled around the edges of the display. The John Dory is lying on its side like a spiked flat of paper, the spot on its tail staring up like an eye. Of all the fish on the cart, it is the only one that actually looks like a fish, and also the only one not giving off a vaguely dead smell. Now, I love John Dory, but tonight I find myself wanting lobster, and I ask about it, about the lobster. The old waiter bows to me, and apologizes, says that they have just run out.

I tell him I will need a moment to think, and he leaves me with the menu and disappears. I am pretty disappointed about that lobster, I can tell you, as I sit there looking at the dishes they have to go with the fish. They have, of course, what you would expect: they have potatoes several ways, salad with garlic, four or five different sauces to go with the fish, but all the time I am thinking about the lobster, about how they have just run out. And then I think: my God, it would be awful if this man, this gloating man who is here reading a book, has just had the last lobster, the lobster that should have come to me when I am not here to gloat.

And just at that moment, as I am thinking this, the old waiter reappears and bows over the man’s table.

“And now, sir,” I hear the waiter say to the man. “Have you had a chance to consider? Is there anything I can offer you to drink?”